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The  Torch 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK   •    BOSTON   •    CHICAGO 
DALLAS   -    SAN    FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  Limited 

LONDON   •    BOMBAY   •    CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  Ltd. 

TORONTO 


THE   TORCH 

EIGKT  LECTURES  ON  RACE  POWER  IN  LITERATURE 

DELIVERED    BEFORE 

THE  LOWELL  INSTITUTE  OF  BOSTON 
MCMIII 

GEORGE   EDWARD   WOODBERRY 


AUGESCITNT  ALIAB   GENTES,    ALIAE   MINUTTNTtTR, 
INQUE    BREVI    8PATIO   MITTANTUR   8AE0LA    ANIMANTTTM 
ET   QUASI    CUR80RK8   VXTAI    LAMPADA   TRADUNT 


Nefa  gorft 

THE   MACMH^LAN   COMPANY 

1912 

All  righU  reserved 


COPTKIGHT,    1905, 

By  McCLURE,   PHILLIPS  &  CO. 


Published  October,  1905.     Reprinted  February,  1912. 


Berwick  &  Smith  Co.,  Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


'}  ^  UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 

BAl^TA  BARBARA  COLLEGE  LlBRARl! 


^^/b 


CONTENTS 

PASS 

Man  and  the  Race 3 

The  Language  of  all  the  World     ....    33 

The  Titan  Myth  (I) 57 

The  Titan  Myth  (II) 81 

Spenser 113 

Milton 139 

Wordsworth 165 

Shelley 193 


The  Torch 


MAN  AND  THE  RACE 


It  belongs  to  a  highly  developed  race  to  become,  in  a 
true  sense,  aristocratic  —  a  treasury  of  its  best  in  practi- 
cal and  spiritual  types,  and  then  to  disappear  in  the  sur- 
rounding tides  of  men.  So  Athens  dissolved  hke  a  pearl 
in  the  cup  of  the  Mediterranean,  and  Rome  in  the  cup 
of  Europe,  and  Judaea  in  the  cup  of  the  Universal  Com- 
munion. Though  death  is  the  law  of  all  life,  man  touches 
this  earthen  fact  with  the  wand  of  the  spirit,  and  trans- 
forms it  into  the  law  of  sacrifice.  Man  has  won  no  vic- 
tory over  his  environment  so  sublime  as  this,  finding  in 
his  mortal  sentence  the  true  choice  of  the  soul  and  in  the 
road  out  of  Paradise  the  open  highway  of  eternal  life. 
Races  die;  but  the  ideal  of  sacrifice  as  the  highest  race- 
destiny  has  seldom  occurred  to  men,  though  it  has  been 
suggested  both  by  devout  Jews  and  by  devout  Irishmen 
as  the  divinely  appointed  organic  law  of  the  Hebrew 
and  the  Celt.  In  the  general  view  of  men  the  extinction 

[3] 


THE  TORCH 
of  a   race   partakes    of   the   unreasoning    finality    of 
nature. 

The  vital  flow  of  life  has  this  in  common  with  disease 
—  that  it  is  self -limited ;  the  fever  runs  its  course,  and 
bums  away.  "All  thoughts,  all  passions,  all  deUghts," 
have  this  history.  In  the  large  arcs  of  social  being,  move- 
ments of  the  human  spirit,  however  embracing  and  pro- 
found, obey  the  same  law  of  the  limitation  of  specific 
energy.  Revolutions,  reforms,  re-births  exhaust  their 
fuel,  and  go  out.  Races  are  only  greater  units  of  man; 
for  a  race,  as  for  an  individual,  there  is  a  time  to  die ;  and 
that  time,  as  history  discloses  it,  is  the  moment  of  per- 
fection. This  is  the  largest  fact  in  the  moral  order  of  the 
world ;  it  is  the  centre  of  providence  in  history.  In  the  life 
of  the  human  spirit  the  death  of  the  best  of  its  achieving 
elements,  in  the  moment  of  their  consummation,  is  as 
the  fading  of  the  flower  of  the  field  or  the  annual  fall  of 
the  leaves  of  the  forest  in  the  natural  world ;  and  unless 
this  be  a  sacrificial  death,  it  were  wantonness  and  waste 
like  the  deaths  of  nature ;  but  man  and  his  works  are  su- 
pernatural, and  raised  above  nature  by  an  imperishable 
relation  which  they  contain.  Race-history  is  a  perpetual 
celebration  of  the  Mass.  The  Cross  initials  every  page 
with  its  broad  gold,  and  he  whose  eye  misses  that  letter 
has  lost  the  clue  to  the  meaning.  I  do  not  refer  to  the  self- 
devotion  of  individuals,  the  sacred  fives  of  the  race.  I 

[4] 


MAN  AND  THE  RACE 
speak  of  the  involuntary  element  in  the  life  of  nations,  or 
what  seems  such  on  the  vast  scale  of  social  Ufe.  Always 
some  great  culture  is  dying  to  enrich  the  soil  of  new  har- 
vests, some  civilization  is  crumbling  to  rubbish  to  be  the 
hill  of  a  more  beautiful  city,  some  race  is  spending  itself 
that  a  lower  and  barbarous  world  may  inherit  its  stored 
treasure-honse.  Although  no  race  may  consciously  de- 
vote itself  to  the  higher  ends  of  mankind,  it  is  the  pre- 
rogative of  its  men  of  genius  so  to  devote  it ;  nor  is  any 
nation  truly  great  which  is  not  so  dedicated  by  its  war- 
riors and  statesmen,  its  saints  and  heroes,  its  thinkers 
and  dreamers.  A  nation's  poets  are  its  true  owners;  and 
by  the  stroke  of  the  pen  they  convey  the  title-deeds  of  its 
real  possessions  to  strangers  and  aUens. 

This  dedication  of  the  energy  of  a  race  by  its  men  of 
genius  to  the  higher  ends  of  mankind  is  the  sap  of  all  the 
world.  The  spiritual  life  of  mankind  spreads,  the  spir- 
itual unity  of  mankind  grows,  by  this  age-long  surrender 
of  privilege  and  power  into  the  hands  of  the  world's  new 
men,  and  the  leavening  of  the  mass  by  the  best  that  has 
anywhere  arisen  in  it,  which  is  thus  brought  about.  The 
absorption  of  aristocracies  in  democracies,  the  dissolu- 
tion of  the  nobler  product  in  inferior  environments,  the 
salutary  death  of  cultures,  civilizations,  breeds  of  men, 
is  the  strict  line  on  which  history,  drawing  the  sundered 
parts  of  the  earth  slowly  together,  moves  to  that  great 

[5] 


THE  TORCH 
consummation  when  the  best  that  has  at  any  time  been 
in  the  world  shall  be  the  portion  of  every  man  born  into 
it.  If  the  old  English  blood,  which  here  on  this  soil  gave 
birth  to  a  nation,  spread  civiUzation  through  it,  and  cast 
the  orbit  of  its  starry  course  in  time,  is  destined  to  be 
thus  absorbed  and  lost  in  the  nation  which  it  has  formed, 
we  should  be  proud  and  happy  in  such  a  fate ;  for  this  is 
to  wear  the  seal  of  God's  election  in  history.  Nay,  if  the 
aristocracy  of  the  whole  white  race  is  so  to  melt  in  a 
world  of  the  coloured  races  of  the  earth,  I  for  one  should 
only  rejoice  in  such  a  divine  triumph  of  the  sacrificial 
idea  in  history;  for  it  would  mean  the  humanization  of 
mankind. 

Unless  this  principle  is  strongly  grasped,  unless  there 
be  an  imperishable  relation  in  man  and  his  works  which 
they  contain,  and  which,  though  it  has  other  phases,  here 
appears  in  this  eternal  salvage  stored  up  in  a  slowly  per- 
fecting race,  history  through  its  length  and  breadth  is  a 
spectacle  to  appall  and  terrify  the  reason.  The  perpetual 
flux  of  time  — 

"  Sceptres,  tiaras,  swords,  and  chains,  and  tomes 
Of  reasoned  wrong,  glozed  on  by  ignorance  " — 

is  a  mere  catastrophe  of  blood  and  error  unless  its 
mighty  subverting  and  dismaying  changes  are  related  to 
sometliing  which  does  not  pass  away  with  dethroned 

[6] 


MAN  AND  THE  RACE 
gods,  abandoned  empires  and  repealed  codes  of  law  and 
morals.  But  in  the  extinction  of  religions,  in  imperial  rev- 
olutions, in  the  bloody  conflict  of  ideas,  there  is  one 
thing  found  stable ;  it  is  the  mind  itself,  growing  through 
ages.  That  which  in  its  continuity  we  call  the  human 
spirit,  abides.  Men,  tribes,  states  disappear,  but  the 
race-mind  endures.  A  conception  of  the  world  and  an 
emotional  response  thereto  constitute  the  life  of  the  race- 
mind,  and  fill  its  consciousness  with  ideas  and  feeUngs, 
but  in  these  there  is  no  element  of  chance,  contingency 
or  frailty;  they  are  master-ideas,  master-emotions, 
clothed  with  the  power  of  a  long  reign  over  men,  and  im- 
posing themselves  upon  each  new  generation  almost 
with  the  yoke  of  necessity.  What  I  designate  as  the  race- 
mind  —  the  sole  thing  permanent  in  history  —  is  this 
potentiality  of  thought  and  feeling,  in  any  age,  realizing 
itself  in  states  of  mind  and  habits  of  action  long  estab- 
lished in  the  race,  deeply  inherited,  and  slowly  modified. 
The  race-mind  is  the  epitome  of  the  past.  It  contains  all 
human  energy,  knowledge,  experience,  that  survives.  It 
is  the  resultant  of  millions  of  lives  whose  earthly  power 
it  stores  in  one  deathless  force. 

This  race-mind  is  simply  formed.  Life  presents  cer- 
tain permanent  aspects  in  the  environment,  which  gen- 
erate ways  of  behaviour  thereto,  normal  and  general 
among  men.  The  world  is  a  multiplicity,  a  harvest-field, 


THE  TORCH 
a  battle-ground;  and  thence  arises  through  human  con- 
tact ways  of  numbering,  or  mathematics,  ways  of  tillage, 
or  agriculture,  ways  of  fighting,  or  miUtary  tactics  and 
strategy,  and  these  are  incorporated  in  individuals  as 
habits  of  life.  The  craftsman  has  the  mind  of  his  craft. 
Life  also  presents  certain  other  permanent  internal  apti- 
tudes in  the  soul,  whence  arisest  the  mind  of  the  artist, 
the  inventor,  the  poet.  But  this  cast  of  mind  of  the  math- 
ematician or  of  the  painter  is  rather  a  phase  of  individual 
Hfe.  In  the  larger  unit  of  the  race,  environment  and  apti- 
tude working  together  in  the  historic  life  of  ages  develop 
ideas,  moods  and  energies  characteristic  of  the  race  in 
which  they  occur.  In  the  sphere  of  ideas,  freedom  is  in- 
dissolubly  linked  with  the  EngHsh,  righteousness  with 
the  Hebrew;  in  the  temperamental  sphere,  a  signal  in- 
stance is  the  Celtic  genius  —  mystery,  twilight,  super- 
natural fantasy,  lamentation,  tragic  disaster  —  or  the 
Greek  genius,  definiteness,  proportioned  beauty,  or- 
dered science,  philosophic  principle;  and,  in  the  sphere 
of  energy,  land  and  gold  hunger,  and  that  strange  soul- 
hunger  —  hunger  to  possess  the  souls  of  men  —  which 
is  at  the  root  of  all  propagandism,  have  been  motive 
powers  in  many  races. 

Thus,  in  one  part  or  another  of  time  and  place,  and 
from  causes  within  and  without,  the  race,  coming  to  its 
best,  flowers  in  some  creative  hope,  ripens  in  some  shap- 

[8] 


MAN  AND  THE  RACE 
ing  thought,  glows  in  some  resistless  enthusiasm.  Each 
of  these  in  its  own  time  holds  an  age  in  its  grasp.  They 
seize  on  men  and  shape  them  in  multitudes  to  their  will, 
as  the  wind  drives  the  locusts ;  make  men  hideous  ascet- 
ics, send  them  on  forlorn  voyages,  devote  them  to  the 
block  and  the  stake,  make  Argonauts,  Crusaders,  Lol- 
lards of  them,  fill  Europe  in  one  age  with  a  riot  of  revo- 
lution and  in  the  next  with  the  camps  of  tyrannic  power. 
These  ideas,  moods,  energies  have  mysterious  potency; 
they  seem  to  possess  an  independent  being ;  though,  like 
all  the  phenomena  of  life-energy  they  are  self-limited, 
the  period  of  their  growth,  culmination  and  decline  ex- 
tends through  generations  and  centuries ;  they  seem  less 
the  brood  of  man's  mind  than  higher  powers  that  feed  on 
men.  They  are  surrounded  by  a  cloud  of  witnesses  — 
fanatics,  martyrs,  dupes;  they  doom  whole  peoples  to 
glory  or  shame;  in  the  undying  battle  of  the  soul  they 
are  the  choosers  of  the  slain.  Though  they  proceed  from 
the  human  spirit,  they  rule  it;  and  in  Ufe  they  are  the 
spiritual  presences  which  are  most  closely  unveiled  to 
the  apprehension,  devotion  and  love  of  men. 

The  race-mind  building  itself  from  immemorial  time 
out  of  this  mystery  of  thought  and  passion,  as  genera- 
tion after  generation  kneels  and  fights  and  fades,  takes 
unerringly  the  best  that  anywhere  comes  to  be  in  the 
world,  holds  to  it  with  the  chng  of  fate,  and  lets  all  else 

[9] 


THE  TORCH 

fall  to  oblivion;  out  of  this  best  it  has  made,  and  still 
fashions,  that  enduring  world  of  idea  and  emotion  into 
which  we  are  born  as  truly  as  into  the  natural  world.  It 
has  a  marvellous  economy. 

"One  accent  of  the  Holy  Ghost 
The  heedless  world  ha^  never  lost." 

Egypt,  India,  Greece  and  Rome,  Italy,  the  English, 
France,  America,  the  Turk,  the  Persian,  the  Russian, 
the  Japanese,  the  Chinese,  the  Negro  feed  its  pure  tra- 
dition of  what  excellence  is  possible  to  the  race-mind, 
and  has  grown  habitual  in  its  being;  and,  as  in  the  old 
myth,  it  destroys  its  parent,  abolishing  all  these  diflFer- 
ences  of  climate,  epoch  and  skull.  The  race-mind  unifies 
the  race  which  it  preserves ;  that  is  its  irresistible  line  of 
advance.  It  wipes  out  the  barriers  of  time,  language  and 
country.  It  undoes  the  mischief  of  Babel,  and  restores 
to  mankind  one  tongue  in  which  all  things  can  be  under- 
stood by  all  men.  It  fuses  the  Bibles  of  all  nations  in  one 
wisdom  and  one  practice.  It  knocks  off  the  tribal  fetters 
of  caste  and  creed;  and,  substituting  thought  for  blood 
as  the  bond  of  the  world,  it  slowly  Uberates  that  free 
soul,  which  is  one  in  all  men  and  common  to  all  man- 
kind. To  free  the  soul  in  the  individual  life,  and  to  ac- 
comphsh  the  unity  of  mankind  —  that  is  its  work. 
To  share  in  this  work  is  the  peculiar  and  characteris- 
[10] 


MAN  AND  THE  RACE 
tic  office  of  literature.  This  fusion  of  the  nations  of  the 
earth,  this  substitution  of  the  thought-tie  for  the  blood- 
tie,  this  enfranchisement  of  the  soul,  is  its  chief  func- 
tion; for  Hterature  is  the  organ  of  the  race-mind.  That 
is  why  literature  is  immortal.  Though  man's  inheritance 
is  bequeathed  in  many  ways  —  the  size  and  shape  of  the 
skull,  the  physical  predisposition  of  the  body,  oral  tradi- 
tion, monumental  and  artistic  works,  institutions  —  civ- 
iUzation  ever  depends  in  an  increasing  degree  upon  litera- 
ture both  for  expression  and  tradition;  and  whatever 
other  forms  the  race-mind  may  mould  itself  into,  litera- 
ture is  its  most  universal  and  comprehensive  form.  That 
is  why  literature  is  the  great  conservator  of  society.  It 
shares  in  the  life  of  the  race-mind,  partakes  of  its  nature, 
as  language  does  of  thought,  corresponds  to  it  accurate- 
ly, duplicates  it,  is  its  other-self.  It  is  through  literature 
mainly  that  we  know  the  race-mind,  and  come  to  pos- 
sess it ;  for  though  the  term  may  seem  abstract,  the  thing 
is  real.  Men  of  genius  are  great  in  proportion  as  they 
share  in  it,  and  national  literatures  are  great  in  propor- 
tion as  they  embody  and  express  it.  Bruntiere,  the  pres- 
ent critic  of  France,  has  recently  announced  a  new  liter- 
ary formula.  He  declares  that  there  is  a  European 
literature,  not  the  combined  group  of  national  litera- 
tures, but  a  single  literature  common  to  European  civil- 
ization, and  that  national  literatures  in  their  periods  of 

[11] 


THE  TORCH 

culmination,  are  great  in  proportion  as  they  coincide  for 
the  time  being  with  this  common  literature,  feed  it,  and, 
one  after  another  taking  the  lead,  create  it.  The  declara- 
tion is  a  gleam  of  self-consciousness  in  the  unity  of  Eu- 
rope. How  slowly  the  parts  of  a  nation  recognize  the 
integrity  of  their  territory  and  the  community  of  their  in- 
terests is  one  of  the  constant  lessons  of  history;  the 
Greek  confederation,  the  work  of  Alfred  or  of  Bis- 
marck, our  own  experience  in  the  Revolutionary  period 
illustrate  it;  so  the  unity  of  Europe  is  still  half -obscure 
and  dark,  though  Catholicism,  the  Renaissance,  the  Re- 
formation, the  Revolution  in  turn  flashed  this  unity 
forth,  struggling  to  reahze  itself  in  the  common  civiHza- 
tion.  The  literature  of  Europe  is  the  expression  of  this 
common  genius  —  the  best  that  man  has  dreamed  or 
thought  or  done,  has  found  or  been,  in  Europe  —  now 
more  brilUant  in  one  capital,  now  in  another  as  the  life 
ebbs  from  state  to  state,  and  is  renewed;  for,  though  it 
fail  here  or  there,  it  never  ceases.  This  is  the  burning  of 
the  race-mind,  now  bright  along  the  Seine,  the  Rhine 
and  the  Thames,  as  once  by  the  Ganges  and  the  Tiber. 
The  true  unity  of  literature,  however,  does  not  lie  in  the 
literature  of  Europe  or  of  India  or  of  antiquity,  or  in  any 
one  manifestation,  but  in  that  world-Uterature  which  is 
the  organ  of  the  race-mind  in  its  entire  breadth  and 
wholeness.  The  new  French  formula  is  a  brilliant  appli- 

[12] 


MAN  AND  THE  RACE 
cation,  novel,  striking  and  arresting,  of  the  old  and  fa- 
miliar idea  that  civilization  in  its  evolution  in  history  is  a 
single  process,  continuous,  advancing  and  integral,  of 
which  nations  and  ages  are  only  the  successive  phases. 
The  life  of  the  spirit  in  mankind  is  one  and  universal, 
burns  with  the  same  fires,  moves  to  the  same  issues, 
joins  in  a  single  history ;  it  is  the  race-mind  realizing  it- 
self cumulatively  in  time,  and  mainly  through  the  inher- 
iting power  of  great  literature. 

I  have  developed  this  conception  of  the  race-mind  at 
some  length  because  it  is  a  primary  idea.  The  nature  of 
literature,  and  the  perspective  and  interaction  of  partic- 
ular literatures,  are  best  comprehended  in  its  light.  I  em- 
phasize it.  The  world-literature,  national  literatures, 
individual  men  of  genius,  are  what  they  are  by  virtue  of 
sharing  in  the  race-mind,  appropriating  it  and  identify- 
ing themselves  with  it ;  and  what  is  true  of  them,  on  the 
great  scale  and  in  a  high  degree,  is  true  also  of  every 
man  who  is  bom  into  the  world.  A  man  is  a  man  by  par- 
ticipating in  the  race-mind.  Education  is  merely  the  pro- 
cess by  which  he  enters  it,  avails  himself  of  it,  absorbs  it. 
In  the  things  of  material  civilization  this  is  plain.  All  the 
callings  of  men,  arts,  crafts,  trades,  sciences,  professions, 
the  entire  round  of  practical  life,  have  a  body  of  knowl- 
edge and  method  of  work  which  are  like  gospel  and 
ritual  to  them;  apprentice,  journeyman  and  master  are 

[13] 


THE  TORCH 

the  stages  of  their  career;  and  if  anything  be  added, 
from  Ufe  to  life,  it  is  on  a  basis  of  ascertained  fact,  of  or- 
thodox doctrine  and  fixed  practice.  I  suppose  technical 
education  is  most  uniform,  and  by  definiteness  of  aim 
and  economy  of  method  is  most  efficient;  and  in  the  pro- 
fessions as  well  as  in  the  arts  and  crafts  competition 
places  so  high  a  premium  on  knowledge  and  skill  that 
the  mastery  of  all  the  past  can  teach  is  compulsory  in  a 
high  degree.  Similarly,  in  society,  the  material  unities 
such  as  those  which  commerce,  manufacturing,  bank- 
ing establish  and  spread,  are  soonest  evident  and  most 
readily  accepted;  so  true  is  this  that  the  peace  of  the 
world  is  rather  a  matter  of  finance  than  of  Christianity. 
These  practical  activities  and  the  interests  that  spring 
out  of  them  lie  in  the  sphere  of  material  civilization ;  but 
the  race-mind,  positive,  enduring  and  beneficent  as  it  is 
in  that  sphere,  is  there  parcelled  out  and  individualized, 
and  gives  a  particular  and  almost  private  character  to 
man  and  classes  of  men,  and  it  seeks  a  material  good. 
There  is  another  and  spiritual  sphere  in  which  the  soul 
which  is  one  and  the  same  in  all  men  comes  to  self- 
knowledge,  has  its  training,  and  achieves  its  mastery  of 
the  world.  Essential,  universal  manhood  is  found  only 
here;  for  it  is  here  that  the  race-mind,  by  participation  in 
which  a  man  is  a  man,  enfranchizes  the  soul  and  gives  to 
it  the  citizenship  of  the  world.  Education  in  the  things  of 

[14] 


MAN  AND  THE  RACE 
the  spirit  is  often  vague  in  aim  and  may  seem  wasteful  in 
method,  and  it  is  not  supported  by  the  thrust  and  impet- 
us of  physical  need  and  worldly  hope ;  but  it  exists  in  all 
men  in  some  measure,  for  no  one  born  in  our  civilization 
is  left  so  savage,  no  savage  born  in  the  wild  is  left  so 
primitive  but  that  he  holds  a  mental  attitude,  however 
obscure,  toward  nature,  man  and  God,  and  has  some 
discipHne,  however  initial,  in  beauty,  love  and  religion. 
These  things  he  in  the  sphere  of  the  soul.  It  is,  neverthe- 
less, true  that  the  greatest  inequaUties  of  condition  exist 
here,  and  not  in  that  part  of  hfe  where  good  is  measured 
by  the  things  of  fortune.  The  difference  between  the  out- 
cast and  the  milhonaire  is  as  nothing  to  that  between  the 
saint  and  the  criminal,  the  fool  and  the  knower,  the  boor 
and  the  poet.  It  is  a  blessing  in  our  civiUzation,  and  one 
worthy  of  the  hand  of  Providence,  that  if  in  material 
things  justice  be  a  laggard  and  disparities  of  condition 
be  hard  to  remedy,  the  roads  to  church  and  school  are 
public  highways,  free  to  all.  This  charter  of  free  educa- 
tion in  the  hfe  of  the  soul,  which  is  the  supreme  oppor- 
tunity of  an  American  life,  is  an  open  door  to  the  treas- 
ury of  man's  spirit.  There  whosoever  will  shall  open  the 
book  of  all  the  world,  and  read  and  ponder,  and  shall 
enter  the  common  mind  of  man  which  is  there  contained 
and  avail  of  its  wisdom  and  absorb  its  energies  into  his 
own  and  become  one  with  it  in  insight,  power  and  hope, 

[15] 


THE  TORCH 
and  ere  he  is  aware  shall  find  himself  mingling  with 
the  wisest,  the  holiest,  the  loveliest,  as  their  comrade  and 
peer.  He  shall  have  poet  and  sage  to  sup  with  him,  and 
their  meal  shall  be  the  bread  of  Ufe. 

What,  then,  is  the  position  of  the  youth  —  of  any  man 
whose  infinite  fife  Hes  before  him  —  at  his  entrance  on 
this  education,  on  this  attempt  to  become  one  with  the 
mind  of  the  race  ?  and,  to  neglect  the  material  side  of  Ufe, 
what  is  the  process  by  which  he  begins  to  Uve  in  the 
spirit,  and  not  as  one  new-born,  but  even  in  his  youth 
sharing  in  the  wisdom  and  disciphned  power  of  a  soul 
that  has  hved  through  all  human  ages  —  the  soul  of 
mankind?  We  forget  the  beginnings  of  life;  we  forget 
first  sensation,  first  action,  and  the  unknown  magic  by 
which,  as  the  nautilus  builds  its  shell,  we  built  out  of 
these  early  elements  this  world  of  the  impalpable  blue 
walls,  the  ocean  and  prairie  floors,  and  star-sown  space, 
each  one  of  us  for  ourselves.  There  is  a  thought,  which  I 
suppose  is  a  commonplace  and  may  be  half-trivial,  but 
it  is  one  that  took  hold  of  me  in  boyhood  with  great  te- 
nacity, and  stirred  the  sense  of  strangeness  and  marvel  in 
life;  the  idea  that  all  I  knew  or  should  ever  know  was 
through  something  that  had  touched  my  body.  The 
ether-wave  envelopes  us  as  the  ocean,  and  in  that  small 
surface  of  contact  is  the  sphere  of  sensibility  —  of  light, 
sound,  and  the  rest  —  out  of  which  arises  the  world 

[16] 


MAN  AND  THE  RACE 
which  each  one  of  us  perceives.  It  seems  a  fantastic  con- 
ception, but  it  is  a  true  one.  For  me  the  idea  seemed 
to  shrink  the  world  to  the  dark  envelope  of  my  own 
body.  It  served,  however,  to  initiate  me  in  the  broader 
conception  that  the  soul  is  the  centre,  and  that  hfe  —  the 
world  —  radiates  from  it  into  the  enclosing  infinite. 
Wordsworth,  you  remember,  in  his  famous  image  of  our 
infancy  presents  the  matter  differently;  for  him  the  in- 
fant began  with  the  infinite,  and  boy  and  man  Uved  in  an 
ever  narrowing  world,  a  contracting  prison,  Uke  that 
fabled  one  of  the  Inquisition,  and  in  the  end  Ufe  became 
a  thing  common  and  finite : 

"Heaven  lies  about  us  in  our  infancy! 
Shades  of  the  prison-house  begin  to  close 

Upon  the  growing  boy, 
But  he  beholds  the  light,  and  whence  it  flows ^ 
He  sees  it  in  his  joy: 

At  length  the  man  perceives  it  die  away. 
And  fade  into  the  light  of  common  day." 

This  was  never  my  own  conception,  nor  do  I  think  it  is 
natural  to  many  men.  On  the  contrary,  hfe  is  an  expan- 
sion. The  sense  of  the  larger  world  comes  first,  perhaps, 
in  those  unremembered  years  when  the  sky  ceases  to  be 
an  inverted  bowl,  and  lifts  off  from  the  earth.  The  ex- 
perience is  fixed  for  me  by  another  half-childish  memory, 
the   familiar   verses    of  Tom    Hood  in  which  he   de- 

[17] 


THE  TORCH 
scribes  his  early  home.  You  will  recall  the  almost  nur- 
sery rhymes: 

"/  remember,  I  remember 

The  fir-trees  dark  and  high; 
I  used  to  think  their  slender  tops 

Were  close  against  the  sky; 
It  was  a  childish  ignorance. 

Bid  now  't  is  little  joy 
To  know  I  'm  farther  off  fram  Heaven 

Than  wJien  I  was  a  boy.'' 

Sentiment  in  the  place  of  philosophy,  the  thought  is  the 
same  as  Wordsworth's,  but  the  image  is  natural  and 
true.  The  noblest  image,  however,  that  sets  forth  the 
spread  of  the  world,  is  in  that  famous  sonnet  by  an  ob- 
scure poet,  Blanco  White,  describing  the  first  time  that 
the  sun  went  down  in  Paradise: 

"  Mysterious  night!  when  our  first  parent  knew 
Thee  from  report  divine,  and  heard  thy  name. 
Did  he  not  tremble  for  this  lovely  frame. 

This  glorious  canopy  of  light  and  blue? 

Yet,  'neath  the  curtain  of  translucent  dew. 
Bathed  in  the  rays  of  the  great  setting  flame, 
Hesperus  with  the  host  of  heaven  came. 

And  lo!  creation  widened  in  mans  view." 

The  theory  of  Copernicus  and  the  voyage  of  Columbus 
are  the  great  historical  moments  of  such  change  in  the 

[18] 


MAN  AND  THE  RACE 
thoughts  of  men.  As  travel  thus  discloses  the  amplitude 
of  the  planet  and  science  fills  the  infinite  of  space  for  the 
learning  mind,  history  in  its  turn  peoples  the  "dark 
background  and  abysm  of  time. "  But  more  marvellous 
than  the  unveiling  of  time  and  space,  is  that  last  revela- 
tion which  unlocks  the  inward  world  of  idea  and  emotion, 
and  gives  sohdity  to  life  as  by  a  third  dimension.  It  is 
this  world  which  is  the  realm  of  imaginative  literature; 
scarcely  by  any  other  interpreter  shall  a  man  come  into 
knowledge  of  it  with  any  adequacy ;  and  here  the  subject 
draws  to  a  head,  for  it  is  by  the  operation  of  Uterature  in 
this  regard  that  the  race-mind  takes  possession  of  the 
world. 

We  are  plunged  at  birth  in  medias  res,  as  the  phrase  is, 
into  the  midst  of  things  —  into  a  world  already  old,  of  old 
ideas,  old  feelings,  old  experience,  that  has  drunk  to  the 
lees  the  wisdom  of  the  preacher  of  Ecclesiastes,  and  re- 
news in  millions  of  lives  the  Ufe  that  has  been  lived  a 
milUon  times ;  a  world  of  custom  and  usage,  of  imme^ 
morial  habits,  of  causes  prejudged,  of  insoluble  prob- 
lems, of  philosophies  and  orthodoxies  and  things  es- 
tabUshed;  and  yet,  too,  a  world  of  the  undiscovered. 
The  youth  awakes  in  this  world,  intellectually,  in  Utera- 
ture; and  since  the  literature  of  the  last  age  is  that  on 
which  the  new  generation  is  formed,  he  now  first  comes 
in  contact  with  the  large  Ufe  of  mankind  in  the  Utera- 

[19] 


THE  TORCH 

ture  of  the  last  century.  It  is  an  extraordinary  miscella- 
neous literature,  varied  and  copious  in  matter,  full  of 
conflicting  ideas,  cardinal  truths,  and  hazardous  guesses; 
and  for  the  young  mind  the  problem  of  orientation  — 
that  is  of  finding  itself,  of  knowing  the  true  East,  is 
difficult.  Literature,  too,  has  an  electric  stimula- 
tion, and  in  the  first  onrush  of  the  intellectual  life  brings 
that  well-known  storm  and  stress  which  is  the  true 
awakening;  with  eager  and  delighted  surprise  the  soul 
feels  fresh  sensibilities  and  unsuspected  energies  rise  in 
its  being.  It  is  a  time  of  shocks,  discoveries,  experiences 
that  change  the  face  of  the  world.  Reading  the  poets,  the 
youth  finds  new  dynamos  in  himself.  A  new  truth  un- 
seals a  new  faculty  in  him ;  a  new  writer  unlooses  a  new 
force  in  him;  he  becomes,  like  Briareus,  hundred- 
handed,  like  Shakspere,  myriad -minded.  So  like  a 
miracle  is  the  discovery  of  the  power  of  hfe. 

Let  me  illustrate  the  experience  in  the  given  case  — 
the  literature  of  the  nineteenth  century.  It  will  all  fall 
under  three  heads:  the  world  of  nature's  frame,  the 
world  of  man's  action,  the  world  of  God's  being.  Na- 
ture is,  in  the  first  instance,  a  spectacle.  One  may  se^  the 
common  sights  of  earth,  and  still  have  seen  Httle.  The 
young  eye  requires  to  be  trained  in  what  to  see,  what  to 
choose  to  see  out  of  the  vague  whole,  and  so  to  see  his  true 
self  reflected  there  in  another  form,  for  in  the  same  land- 

[20] 


MAN  AND  THE  RACE 
scape  the  farmer,  the  military  engineer,  the  painter  see 
each  a  different  picture.  Burns  teaches  the  young  heart 
to  see  nature  reahstically,  definitely,  in  hard  outhne,  and 
always  in  association  with  human  Ufe  —  and  the  pres- 
ence of  animals  friendly  and  serviceable  to  man,  the  Ufe 
of  the  farm,  is  a  dominant  note  in  the  scene.  Byron 
guides  the  eye  to  elemental  grandeur  in  the  storm  and 
in  the  massiveness  of  Alp  and  ocean.  Shelley  brings  out 
colour  and  atmosphere  and  evokes  the  luminous  spirit 
from  every  star  and  dew-drop  and  dying  wave.  Tenny- 
son makes  nature  an  artist's  easel  where  from  poem  to 
poem  glows  the  frescoing  of  the  walls  of  life.  Thus 
changing  from  page  to  page  the  youth  sees  nature  with 
Burns  as  a  man  who  sympathizes  with  human  toil,  with 
Byron  as  a  man  who  would  mate  with  the  tempest,  with 
Slielley  as  a  man  of  almost  spiritualized  senses,  with 
Tennyson  as  a  man  of  artistic  luxury.  Again,  nature  is  an 
order,  a  law  in  matter,  such  as  science  conceives  her;  and 
this  phase  appears  inceptively  in  "Queen  Mab  "and  ex- 
plicitly in  "  In  Memoriam,"  and  many  a  minor  poem  of 
Tennyson,  not  the  less  great  because  minor  in  his  work, 
in  which  alone  the  scientific  spirit  of  the  age  has  found 
utterance  equal  to  its  own  sublimity.  Yet,  again,  nature 
is  a  symbol,  an  expression  of  truth  itself  in  another 
medium  than  thought;  and  so,  in  minute  ways.  Burns 
moralized  the  "  Mountain  Daisy, "  and  Wordsworth  the 

[21] 


THE  TORCH 
"Small  Celadine;"  and,  on  the  grand  scale,  Shelley 
mythologized  nature  in  vast  oracular  figures  of  man's 
faith,  hope,  and  destiny.  And  again,  nabure  is  a  moulding 
influence  so  close  to  human  life  as  to  be  a  spiritual  pres- 
ence about  and  within  it.  This  last  feeling  of  the  partici- 
pation of  nature  in  hfe  is  so  fundamental  that  no  master 
of  song  is  without  it ;  but,  in  this  group,  Wordsworth  is 
pre-eminent  as  its  exponent,  with  such  directness,  cer- 
tainty and  power  did  he  seize  and  express  it.  What  he 
saw  in  his  dalesmen  was  what  the  mountains  had  made 
them;  what  he  told  in  " Tintern  Abbey "  was  nature 
making  of  him;  what  he  sang  in  his  lyric  of  ideal 
womanhood  was  such  an  intimacy  of  nature  with  wo- 
man's being  that  it  was  scarcely  to  be  divided  from  her 
spirit.  The  power  which  fashions  us  from  birth,  sustains 
the  vital  force  of  the  body,  and  feeds  its  growing  func- 
tions, seems  to  exceed  the  blind  and  mute  region  of  mat- 
ter, and  feeding  the  senses  with  colour,  music  and  de- 
Hght  shapes  the  soul  itself  and  guides  it,  and  supports 
and  consoles  the  child  it  has  created  in  mortality.  I  do 
not  overstate  Wordsworth's  sense  of  this  truth ;  and  it  is 
a  truth  that  twines  about  the  roots  of  all  poetry  like  a 
river  of  life.  It  explains  to  the  growing  boy  something  in 
his  own  history,  and  he  goes  on  in  the  paths  he  has  begun 
to  follow,  it  may  be  with  touches  of  vague  mystery  but 
with  an  expectant,  receptive  and  responsive  heart.  In 

[22] 


MAN  AND  THE  RACE 
regard  to  nature,  then,  the  youth's  Ufe  under  the  favour 
of  these  poets  appreciates  her  in  at  least  these  four  ways, 
artistically,  scientifically,  symbolically  and  spiritually, 
and  begins  to  fix  in  moulds  of  his  own  spirit  that  miracle 
of  change,  the  Protean  being  of  matter. 

To  turn  to  the  world  of  man's  fife,  the  simplest  gain 
from  contact  with  this  literature  of  which  I  am  speaking 
is  in  the  education  of  the  historic  sense.  Romance  discov- 
ered history,  and  seeking  adventure  and  thriving  in  what 
it  sought,  made  that  great  find,  the  Middle  Ages,  which 
the  previous  time  looked  on  much  as  we  regard  the  civili- 
zation of  China  with  mingled  ignorance  and  contempt. 
It  found  also  the  Gael  and  the  Northmen,  and  many  an 
outlying  region,  many  a  buried  tract  of  time.  In  Scott's 
novels  characteristically,  but  also  in  countless  others,  in 
the  rescued  and  revived  ballad  of  England  and  the  North, 
and  in  the  renewed  forms  of  Greek  imagination,  the  his- 
toric sense  is  strongly  drawn  on,  and  no  reader  can  es- 
cape its  culture,  for  the  place  of  history  and  its  inspira- 
tional power  in  literature  is  fundamental  in  the  spirit  of 
the  nineteentTi  century.  But  what  most  arrests  the  young 
heart,  in  this  world  of  man's  life,  is  those  ideas  which  we 
sum  up  as  the  Revolution,  and  the  principle  of  democ- 
racy which  is  primary  in  the  literature  of  the  last  age. 
There  the  three  great  words  —  liberty,  fraternity  and 
equality  —  and  the  theory  that  in  Shelley  was  so  bum- 

[23] 


THE  TORCH 
ing  an  enthusiasm  and  in  Byron  so  passionate  a  force, 
are  still  aflame ;  and  the  new  feeling  toward  man  which 
was  implicit  in  democracy  is  deeply  planted  in  that 
aspect  of  fraternity  which  appears  in  the  interest  in  the 
common  lot,  and  in  that  aspect  of  liberty  which  appears 
in  the  sense  of  the  dignity  of  the  individual.  Burns,  Scott, 
Dickens  illustrate  the  one;  Byron,  Shelley  and  Carlyle 
the  other.  The  literature  of  the  great  watchwords,  the 
literature  of  the  life  of  the  humble  classes,  the  literature 
of  the  rebellious  individual  will  —  the  latter  flashing  out 
many  a  wild  career  and  exploding  many  a  startling  the- 
ory of  how  life  is  to  be  lived  —  are  the  very  core  and  sub- 
stance of  the  time.  The  application  of  ideas  to  life  in  the 
large,  of  which  Rousseau  was  so  cardinal  an  example, 
opens  an  endless  field  in  a  century  so  rich  in  discovery, 
so  active  in  intellect  and  so  plastic  in  morals;  and  here 
one  may  wander  at  will.  Here  is  matter  for  a  Ufetime. 
But  without  particularizing,  it  is  plain  how  variously, 
how  profoundly  and  vividly  through  this  literature  the 
mind  is  exercised  in  the  human  world,  takes  on  the 
colour,  picturesqueness  and  movement  of  history,  builds 
up  the  democratic  social  faith  and  develops  the  energy 
of  individual  freedom,  and  becomes  a  place  for  the  ca- 
reer of  great  ideas. 

There  remains  the  world  of  God's  being,  or  to  vary 
the  phrase  in  sympathy  with  the  mode  of  approach  char- 

[24] 


MAN  AND  THE  RACE 
acteristic  of  the  nineteenth  century,  the  world  in  "vrhich 
God  is.  It  may  be  broadly  stated  that  the  notion  of 
what  used  to  be  called  an  absentee  God,  a  far-off  Ruler 
overseeing  by  modes  analogous  to  human  administra- 
tion the  affairs  of  earth  as  a  distant  province,  finds  no 
place  in  this  literature  of  the  last  age.  The  note  of  thought 
is  rather  of  the  intimacy  of  God  with  his  creation  and 
with  the  soul  of  man.  God  is  known  in  two  ways;  as  an 
idea  in  the  intellect  and  as  an  experience  in  the  emo- 
tions ;  and  in  poetry  the  two  modes  blend,  and  often 
blur  where  they  blend.  Their  habitual  expression  in  the 
great  poets  of  the  age  is  in  pantheistic  forms,  but  this  is 
rather  a  matter  of  form  than  of  substance.  The  imma- 
nence of  the  divine  is  the  root-idea ;  in  Wordsworth  it  is 
an  immanence  of  sublime  power,  seized  through  com- 
munion with  nature;  in  Shelley,  who  was  more  pro- 
foundly human,  it  is  an  immanence  of  transcendent  love, 
seized  through  his  sense  of  the  destiny  of  the  universe 
that  carries  in  its  bosom  the  glory  of  life ;  in  Tennyson, 
in  whom  the  sense  of  a  veiled  intellect  was  more  deep, 
it  is  an  immanence  of  mystery  in  both  the  outer  and  the 
inner  world.  In  other  parts  of  the  field,  God  is  also  con- 
ceived in  history,  and  there  immanent  as  Providence. 
His  immanence  in  the  individual  —  a  matter  dark  to 
any  thought  —  is  most  explicitly  set  forth  by  Emerson. 
It  is  perhaps  generally  considered  that  in  the  literature 

[25] 


THE  TORCH 
of  the  ninteenth  century  there  is  a  large  sceptical  and 
atheistic  element ;  but  this  is  an  error.  Genius  by  its  own 
nature  has  no  part  in  the  spirit  that  denies ;  it  is  positive, 
affirms  and  creates.  Its  apparent  denials  will  be  found  to 
be  partial,  and  affect  fragments  of  a  dead  past  only ;  its 
denials  are,  in  reality,  higher  and  more  universal  affirm- 
ations. If  Wordsworth  appears  to  put  nature  in  the  place 
of  God,  or  Shelley  love,  or  Keats  beauty,  they  only  affirm 
that  phase  of  the  divine  which  is  nighest  to  their 
own  apprehension,  affection  and  delight.  Their  experi- 
ence of  the  divine  governs  and  blends  with  their  intel- 
lectual theory,  sometimes,  as  I  have  said,  with  a  blur  of 
thought.  Each  one's  experience  in  these  things  is  for 
himself  alone,  and  private;  the  ways  of  the  Spirit  no 
man  knows ;  but  it  is  manifest  that  for  the  opening  mind, 
whether  of  youth  or  of  older  years,  the  sense  of  eternity, 
however  dehcate,  subtle  and  silent  is  its  realm,  is  fed 
nobly,  sweetly  and  happily,  by  these  poets  in  whom  the 
spirit  of  man  crying  for  expression  unlocks  the  secrecy 
of  its  relations  to  the  infinite. 

Such  is  the  nature  of  the  contact  of  the  mind  with 
literature  by  means  of  which  it  enters  on  its  race  inheri- 
tance of  idea  and  emotion,  takes  possession  of  the  stored 
results,  clothes  itself  with  energies  whose  springs  are  in 
the  earUest  distance  of  time,  and  builds  up  anew  for  it- 
self the  whole  and  various  world  as  it  has  come  to  be 

[26] 


MAN  AND  THE  RACE 
known  by  man  in  his  age-long  experience.  The  illus- 
tration I  have  employed  minimizes  the  constancy,  the 
completeness,  the  vastness  of  the  process ;  for  it  takes  no 
account  of  other  disciplines,  of  religious  tradition  and 
practice,  of  oral  transmission,  and  of  such  universal  and 
intimate  formative  powers  as  mere  language.  But  it  will 
be  found  on  analysis  that  all  of  these  depend,  in  the 
main,  on  hterature  in  the  broad  sense;  and,  in  the  educa- 
tion of  the  soul  in  the  higher  hfe,  the  awakening,  the  re- 
veahng  and  upbuilding  force  Ues,  I  am  persuaded,  in  the 
pecuhar  charge  of  hterature  in  which  the  race-mind  has 
stamped  an  image  of  itself. 

It  is  obvious  that  what  I  have  advanced,  brings  the 
principle  of  authority  into  a  cardinal  place  in  life,  and 
clothes  tradition  with  great  power.  It  might  seem  that 
the  individual  in  becoming  one  with  the  race-mind  has 
only  to  endue  himself  with  the  past  as  with  a  garment,  to 
take  its  mould  with  the  patience  of  clay,  and  to  be  in  the 
issue  a  recast  of  the  past,  thinking  old  thoughts,  feeling 
old  emotions,  doing  old  actions,  in  pre-established  ways. 
But  this  is  to  misconceive  the  process  by  which  the  in- 
dividual effects  this  union ;  he  does  not  take  the  impress 
of  the  race-mind  as  the  wax  receives  the  imprint  of  the 
seal.  This  union  is  an  act  of  life,  a  process  of  energy,  joy 
and  growth,  of  self-expression;  here  learning  is  living, 
and  there  is  no  other  way  to  know  the  doctrine  than  to  do 

[27] 


THE  TORCH 
its  will;  so  the  race-mind  is  not  copied,  but  is  perpetu- 
ally re-bom  in  men,  and  the  world  which  each  one  of  us 
thus  builds  for  himself  out  of  his  preferred  capacities, 
memories  and  desires  —  our  farmer's,  engineer's, 
painter's  world,  as  I  have  said  —  is  his  own  original  and 
unique  world.  There  is  none  like  it,  none.  Originality 
consists  in  this  re-birth  of  the  world  in  the  young  soul. 
This  world,  nevertheless,  the  world  of  each  of  us,  is  not 
one  of  wilfulness,  fantasy  and  caprice;  if,  on  the  one 
hand,  it  is  such  stuff  as  dreams  are  made  of,  on  the  other 
it  is  the  stuff  of  necessity.  It  has  a  consistency,  a  law  and 
fate,  of  its  own,  which  supports,  wields  and  sustains  it. 
Authority  is  no  more  than  the  recognition  of  and  obedi- 
ence to  this  underlying  principle  of  being,  whose  will  is 
disclosed  to  us  in  man's  life  so  far  as  that  life  in  its 
wholeness  falls  within  our  view;  in  knowledge  of  this 
will  all  wisdom  consists,  of  its  action  in  us  all  experience 
is  woven,  and  in  union  with  it  all  private  judgment  is 
confirmed.  Authority,  truly  interpreted,  is  only  another 
phase  of  that  identity  of  the  soul  in  all  men  by  virtue  of 
which  society  exists,  and  especially  that  intellectual 
state  arises,  that  state  which  used  to  be  called  the  repub- 
lic of  letters  and  which  is  the  institution  of  the  race-mind 
to  be  the  centre,  the  home  and  hope  of  civilization  in  all 
ages  —  that  state  where  the  unity  of  mankind  is  accom- 
plished in  the  spiritual  unities  of  science,  art  and  love. 

[28] 


MAN  AND  THE  RACE 
To  sum  up  these  suggestions  which  I  have  thought  it 
desirable  to  offer  in  order  that  the  point  of  view  taken  in 
these  lectures  might,  perhaps,  be  plain,  I  conceive  of 
history  as  a  single  process  in  which  through  century 
after  century  in  race  after  race  the  soul  of  man  proceeds 
in  a  progressive  comprehension  of  the  universe  and  evo- 
lution of  its  own  humanity,  and  passes  on  to  each  new 
generation  its  accumulated  knowledge  and  developed 
energies,  in  their  totality  and  without  loss,  at  the  acme 
of  achievement.  I  conceive  of  this  inheriting  and  be- 
queathing power  as  having  its  life  and  action  in  the  race- 
mind.  I  conceive  of  literature  as  an  organ  of  the  race- 
mind,  and  of  education  as  the  process  by  which  the  in- 
dividual enters  into  the  race-mind,  becomes  more  and 
more  man,  and  in  the  spiritual  life  mainly  by  means  of 
literature.  I  conceive  of  the  body  of  men  who  thus  live 
and  work  in  the  soul  as  constituting  the  intellectual 
state,  that  republic  of  letters,  in  which  the  race-mind 
reaches,  from  age  to  age,  its  maximum  of  knowledge 
and  power,  in  men  of  genius  and  those  whose  lives  they 
illumine,  move  and  direct;  the  unity  of  mankind  is  the 
ideal  end  of  this  state,  and  the  freeing  of  the  soul  which 
takes  place  in  it  is  its  means.  I  conceive  of  the  progres- 
sive life  of  this  state,  in  civilization  after  civilization,  as 
a  perpetual  death  of  the  best,  in  culture  after  culture,  for 
the  good  of  the  lower,  a  continuing  sacrifice,  in  the  history 

[29] 


THE  TORCH 
of  humanity,  of  man  for  mankind.  And  from  this  mys- 
tery, though  to  some  it  may  seem  only  the  recourse  of  in- 
tellectual despair,  I  pluck  a  confident  faith  in  that  im- 
perishable relation  which  man  and  his  works  contain, 
and  which  though  known  only  in  the  continuity  of 
the  race-mind,  I  am  compelled  to  believe,  has  eternal 
reality. 


[SO] 


The  Torch 
n 


THE  LANGUAGE  OF  ALL  THE  WORLD 


The  language  of  literature  is  the  language  of  all  the 
world.  It  is  necessary  to  divest  ourselves  at  once  of  the 
notion  of  diversified  vocal  and  grammatical  speech 
which  constitutes  the  various  tongues  of  the  earth,  and 
conceals  the  identity  of  image  and  logic  in  the  minds  of 
all  men.  Words  are  intermediary  between  thought  and 
things.  We  express  ourselves  really  not  through  words, 
which  are  only  signs,  but  through  what  they  signify  — 
through  things.  Literature  is  the  expression  of  Ufe.  The 
question,  then,  is  —  what  things  has  literature  found 
most  effectual  to  express  Ufe,  and  has  therefore  habitu- 
ally preferred  ?  and  what  tradition  in  consequence  of  this 
habit  of  preference  has  been  built  up  in  all  literatures, 
and  obtained  currency  and  authority  in  this  pro- 
vince of  the  wider  realm  of  all  art  ?  It  is  an 
interesting  question,  and  fu)idamental  for  any  one 
who  desires  to   appreciate  literature  understandingly. 

[33] 


THE  TORCH 
Perhaps  you  will  permit  me  to  approach  it  somewhat 
indirectly. 

You  are  all  familiar  with  something  that  is  called 
poetic  diction  —  that  is,  a  selected  language  specially 
fitted  for  the  uses  of  poetry;  and  you  are,  perhaps,  not 
quite  so  familiar  with  the  analogous  feature  in  prose, 
wliich  is  now  usually  termed  preciosity,  or  preciousness 
of  language,  that  is,  a  highly  refined  and  aesthetic  diction, 
such  as  Walter  Pater  employs.  The  two  are  constant 
products  of  language  that  receives  any  Uterary  cultiva- 
tion, and  they  are  sometimes  called  diseases  of  language. 
Thus,  in  both  early  and  late  Greek  there  sprang  up  Ut- 
erary styles  of  expression,  involving  the  preference  of 
certain  words,  constructions  and  even  cadences,  and  the 
teaching  of  art  in  these  matters  was  the  business  of  the 
Greek  rhetorician ;  so  in  Italy,  Spain,  and  France,  in  the 
Renaissance,  similar  styles,  each  departing  from  the 
common  and  habitual  speech  of  the  time,  grew  up,  and 
in  England  you  identify  this  mood  of  language  in  Ehza- 
beth's  day  as  Euphuism.  The  phenomenon  is  common, 
and  belongs  to  the  nature  of  language.  Poetic  diction, 
however,  you  perhaps  associate  most  clearly  with  the 
mannerism  in  language  of  the  eighteenth  century  in 
England,  when  common  and  so-called  vulgar  words  were 
exiled  from  poetry,  and  Gray,  for  example,  could  not 
speak  of  the  Eton  schoolboys  as  playing  hoop,  but  only 

134  1 


THE  LANGUAGE  OF  ALL  THE  WORLD 

as  "  chasing  the  rolling  circles'  speed, "  and  when,  to  use 
the  stock  example,  all  green  things  were  "  verdant.  "  This 
is  fixed  in  our  memory  because  Wordsworth  has  the 
credit  of  leading  an  attack  on  the  poetic  diction  of  that 
period,  both  critically  in  his  prefaces  and  practically  in 
his  verse ;  he  went  to  the  other  extreme,  and  introduced 
into  his  poetry  such  homely  words  as  "tub,"  for  ex- 
ample ;  he  held  that  the  proper  language  of  poetry  is  the 
language  of  common  Ufe.  So  Emerson  in  his  addresses, 
you  remember,  had  recourse  to  the  humblest  objects  foi- 
illustration,  and  shocked  the  formaUsm  of  his  time  by 
speaking  of  "  the  meal  in  the  firkin,  the  milk  in  the  pan.  " 
He  was  applying  in  prose  the  rule  of  Wordsworth  in 
poetry.  Walt  Whitman  represents  the  extreme  of  this  use 
of  the  actual  language  of  men.  But  if  you  consider  the 
matter,  you  will  see  that  tliis  choice  of  the  homely  word 
only  sets  up  at  last  a  fashion  of  homeliness  in  the  place  of 
a  fashion  of  refinement,  and  breeds,  for  instance,  dia- 
lect poets  in  shoals ;  and  often  the  choice  is  really  not  of 
the  word,  but  of  the  homely  thing  itself  as  the  object  of 
thought  and  expressive  image  of  it;  and  in  men  so  great 
as  Emerson  and  Wordsworth  the  practice  is  a  proof  of 
that  sympathy  with  common  life  which  made  them  both 
great  democrats.  But  in  addition  to  the  diction  that 
characterizes  an  age,  you  must  have  observed  that 
in  every  original  writer  there  grows  up  a   particular 

[35] 


THE  TORCH 
vocabulary,  structure  and  rhythm  that  he  affects  and 
that  in  the  end  become  his  mannerism,  or  distinct- 
ive style,  so  marked  that  you  recognize  his  work  by  its 
stamp  alone,  as  in  Keats,  Browning,  and  Swinburne  in 
poetry,  and  in  Arnold  in  prose.  In  other  words  there  is  at 
work  in  the  language  of  a  man,  or  of  an  age  even,  a  con- 
stant principle  of  selection  which  tends  to  prefer  certain 
ways  and  forms  of  speech  to  others,  and  in  the  end  de- 
velopes  a  language  characteristic  of  the  age,  or  of  the 
man. 

This  principle  of  selection,  whether  it  works  toward 
refinement  or  homeliness,  operates  in  the  same  way.  It 
must  be  remembered  —  and  it  is  too  often  forgotten  — 
that  the  problem  of  any  artistic  work  is  a  problem  of 
economy.  How  to  get  into  the  two  hours'  traflfic  of  the 
stage  the  significance  of  a  whole  fife,  of  a  group  of  fives ; 
how  to  pack  into  a  sixteen-line  lyric  a  dramatic  situation 
and  there  sphere  it  in  its  own  emotion;  how  to  rouse 
passion  and  pour  it  in  a  three-minute  poem,  fike  Shel- 
ley's "  Indian  Air  "  —  all  these  are  problems  in  economy, 
by  which  speed,  condensation,  intensity  are  gained. 
Now  words  in  themselves  are  colourless,  except  so  far  as 
their  musical  quality  is  concerned ;  but  the  thing  that  a 
word  stands  for  has  a  meaning  of  its  own  and  usually  a 
meaning  charged  with  associations,  and  often  this  asso- 
ciative meaning  is  the  primary  and  important  one  in  its 

[36] 


THE  LANGUAGE  OF  ALL  THE  WORLD 
use.  A  rose,  for  example,  is  but  the  most  beautiful  of 
flowers  in  itself,  but  it  is  so  charged  with  association  in 
men's  Hves,  and  still  more  heavily  charged  with  long  use 
of  emotion  in  literature,  that  the  very  word  and  mere 
name  of  it  awakes  the  heart  and  sets  a  thousand  mem- 
ories unconsciously  vibrating.  This  added  meaning  is 
what  I  am  accustomed  to  term  an  overtone  in  words; 
and  it  is  manifest  that,  in  view  of  the  necessity  for  econ- 
omy in  poetic  art,  those  words  which  are  the  richest  and 
deepest  in  overtone  will  be  preferred,  because  of  the 
speed,  certainty  and  fullness  they  contain.  The  question 
will  be  what  overtones  in  Hfe  appeal  most  to  this  or  that 
poet ;  he  will  reproduce  them  in  his  verse ;  Pope  will  use 
the  overtones  of  a  polished  society,  Wordsworth  and 
Emerson  those  of  humble  hfe.  Now  our  larger  question 
is  what  overtones  are  characteristically  preferred  in 
great  literature,  in  what  objects  do  they  most  inhere, 
and  in  what  way  is  the  authoritative  tradition  of  litera- 
ture, as  respects  its  means  of  expression,  thus  built  up  ? 
It  goes  without  saying  that  all  overtones  are  either  of 
thought  or  feeling.  What  modes  of  expression,  then, 
what  material  objects,  what  forms  of  imagination,  what 
abstract  principles  of  thought,  are  most  deeply  charged 
with  ideas  and  emotions  ?  It  will  be  agreed  that,  as  a 
mere  medium,  music  expresses  pure  emotion  most  di- 
rectly and  richly;  music  seems  to  enter  the  physical 

[37] 


THE  TORCH 

frame  of  the  body  itself,  and  move  there  with  the  warmth 
and  instancy  of  blood.  The  sound  of  words,  therefore, 
cannot  be  neglected,  and  in  the  melody  and  echo  of 
poetry  sound  is  a  cardinal  element;  yet,  it  is  here  only 
the  veining  of  the  marble,  it  is  not  the  material  itself.  In 
the  objects  which  words  summon  up,  there  is  sometimes 
an  emotional  power  as  direct  and  immediate  as  that  of 
music  itself,  as  for  example,  in-  the  great  features  of  na- 
ture, the  mountains,  the  plains,  the  ocean,  which  awe 
even  the  savage  mind.  But,  in  general,  the  emotional 
power  of  material  objects  is  lent  to  them  by  association, 
that  is  by  the  human  use  that  has  been  made  of  them,  as 
on  the  plain  of  Marathon,  to  use  Dr.  Johnson's  old  illus- 
tration, it  is  the  thought  of  what  happened  there  that 
makes  the  spectator's  patriotism  "gain  force"  as  he 
surveys  the  scene.  This  human  use  of  the  world  is  the 
fountain  of  significance  in  all  imaginative  and  poetic 
speech;  and  in  the  broad  sense  history  is  the  story  of 
this  human  use  of  the  world. 

History  is  so  much  of  past  experience  as  abides  in 
race-memory;  and  underUes  race-hterature  in  the  same 
way  that  a  poet's  own  experience  underUes  his  expres- 
sion of  life.  I  do  not  mean  that  when  a  poet  unlocks  his 
heart,  as  Shakspere  did  in  his  sonnets,  he  necessarily 
writes  his  own  biography;  in  the  poems  he  writes  there 
may  be  much  of  actual  event  as  in  Burns's  love-songs,  or 

[38] 


THE  LANGUAGE  OF  ALL  THE  WORLD 
little  as  in  Dante's  "  New  Life."  Much  of  a  poet's  experi- 
ence takes  place  in  imagination  only;  the  life  he  tells  is 
oftenest  the  life  that  he  strongly  desires  to  live,  and  the 
power,  the  purity  and  height  of  his  utterance  may  not 
seldom  be  the  greater  because  experience  here  uses  the 
voices  of  desire.  "  All  I  could  never  be, "  in  Browning's 
plangent  line,  has  been  the  mounting  strain  of  the  sub- 
limest  and  the  tenderest  songs  of  men.  All  Ireland  could 
never  be,  thrills  and  sorrows  on  her  harp's  most  resonant 
string,  and  is  the  master-note  to  which  her  sweetest 
music  ever  returns.  All  man  could  never  be  makes  the 
sad  majesty  of  Virgil's  verse.  As  with  a  man,  what  a  na- 
tion strongly  desires  is  no  small  part  of  its  life,  and  is  the 
mark  of  destiny  upon  it,  whether  for  failure  or  success; 
so  the  note  of  world-empire  is  heard  in  the  latest 
English  verse,  and  the  note  of  humanity  —  the  service 
of  all  men  —  has  always  been  dominant  in  our  own.  His- 
tory, then,  must  be  thought  of,  in  its  relation  to  litera- 
ture, as  including  the  desire  as  well  as  the  performance 
of  the  race. 

History,  however,  in  the  narrowest  sense,  lies  close  to 
the  roots  of  imaginative  literature.  The  great  place  of 
history  and  its  inspirational  power  in  the  literature  of 
the  last  century  I  have  already  referred  to ;  it  is  one  of  the 
most  important  elements  in  the  extraordinary  reach  and 
range  of  that  splendid  outburst  of  imagination  through- 

[39] 


THE  TORCH 
out  Europe.  Aristotle  recognized  the  value  of  history  as 
an  aid  to  the  imagination,  at  the  very  moment  that  he 
elevated  poetry  above  history.  In  that  necessary  econo- 
my of  art,  of  which  I  spoke,  it  is  a  great  gain  to  have 
well-known  characters  and  familiar  events,  such  as 
Agamemnon  and  the  "Trojan  War,"  in  which  much  is 
already  done  for  the  spectator  before  the  play  begins. 
So  our  present  historical  novelists  have  their  stories  half- 
written  for  them  in  the  minds  of  their  readers,  and  es- 
pecially avail  themselves  of  an  emotional  element  there, 
a  patriotism,  which  they  do  not  have  to  create.  The  use 
of  history  to  the  imagination,  however,  goes  farther  than 
merely  to  spare  it  the  pains  of  creating  character  and  in- 
cident and  evoking  emotion.  It  assists  a  Uterary  move- 
ment to  begin  with  race-power  much  as  a  poet's  or  — 
as  in  Dickens's  case  —  a  novelist's  own  experience  aids 
him  to  develop  his  work,  however  much  that  experience 
may  be  finally  transformed  in  the  work.  Thus  the  novel 
of  the  last  age  really  started  its  great  career  from  Scott's 
historic  sense  working  out  into  imaginative  expression, 
and  in  a  lesser  degree  from  so  minor  a  writer  as  Miss 
Edgeworth  in  whose  Irish  stories  —  which  were  con- 
temporary  history  —  Scott  courteously  professed  to 
find  his  own  starting  point.  It  is  worth  noting,  also,  that 
the  Ehzabethan  drama  had  the  same  course.  Shakspere 
following  Marlowe's  example  developed  from  the  his- 

[40] 


THE  LANGUAGE  OF  ALL  THE  WORLD 
torical  English  plays,  in  which  he  worked  in  Scott's 
manner,  into  his  full  control  of  imagination  in  the  purely 
ideal  sphere.  History  has  thus  often  been  the  handmaid 
of  imagination,  and  the  foster-mother  of  great  hterary 
ages.  Yet  to  vary  Aristotle's  phrase  —  poetry  is  all  his- 
tory could  never  be. 

It  appears  to  me,  nevertheless,  that  history  underlies 
race-literature  in  a  far  more  profound  and  universal  way. 
History  is  mortal :  it  dies.  Yet  it  does  not  altogether  die. 
Elements,  features,  fragments  of  it  survive,  and  enter 
into  the  eternal  memory  of  the  race,  and  are  there  trans- 
formed, and  —  as  we  say  —  spiritualized.  Literature  is 
the  abiding-place  of  this  transforming  power,  and  most 
profits  by  it.  And  to  come  to  the  heart  of  the  matter, 
there  have  been  at  least  three  such  cardinal  trans- 
formations in  the  past. 

The  first  transformation  of  history  is  mythology.  I  do 
not  mean  to  enter  on  the  vexed  question  of  the  origin  of 
mythologies ;  and,  of  course,  in  referring  to  history  as  its 
ground,  I  include  much  more  than  that  hero-worship 
such  as  you  will  find  elaborated  or  invented  in  Carlyle's 
essay  on  Odin,  and  especially  I  include  all  that  experi- 
ence of  nature  and  her  association  with  human  toil  and 
moods  that  you  will  find  delineated  with  such  marvellous 
subtleness  and  fullness  in  Walter  Pater's  essay  on 
Dionysus.  In  mythology,  mankind  preserved  from  his 

[41] 


THE  TORCH 
primitive  experience  of  nature,  and  his  own  heroic  past 
therein,  all  that  had  any  lasting  significance;  and,  al- 
though all  mythologies  have  specific  features  and  a  par- 
ticular value  of  their  own,  yet  the  race,  coming  to  its  best, 
as  I  have  said,  bore  here  its  perfect  blossom  in  Greek 
mythology.  I  know  not  by  what  grace  of  heaven,  by 
what  felicity  of  blend  in  climate,  blood  and  the  fortune 
of  mortal  life,  but  so  it  was  that  the  human  soul  put  forth 
the  bud  of  beauty  in  the  Greek  race;  and  there,  at  the 
dawn  of  our  own  intellectual  civilization  and  in  the  first 
sunrise  of  our  poetry  in  Homer,  was  found  a  world  filled 
with  divine  —  with  majestic  and  lovely  figures,  which 
had  absorbed  into  their  celestial  being  and  forms  the 
power  of  nature,  the  splendour  and  charm  of  the  ma- 
terial sphere,  the  fructifying  and  beneficient  opera- 
tions of  the  external  universe,  the  providence  of  the  state 
and  the  inspiration  of  all  arts  and  crafts,  of  games  and 
wars  and  song ;  each  of  these  deities  was  a  flashing  centre 
of  human  energy,  aspiration,  reliance  —  with  a  realm 
and  servants  of  its  own ;  and  mingling  with  them  in  fair 
companionship  was  a  company  of  demi-gods  and  heroes, 
of  kings  and  princes,  and  of  golden  youths,  significant  of 
the  fate  of  all  young  fife  —  Adonis,  Hippolytus,  Orestes. 
This  mythologic  world  was  near  to  earth,  and  it  mixed 
with  legendary  history,  such  history  as  the  "  Iliad  "  con^ 
tained,  and  also  with  the  private  and  pubhc  life  of  the 

[42] 


THE  LANGUAGE  OF  ALL  THE  WORLD 
citizens,  being  the  ceremonial  religion  of  the  state.  It  was 
all,  nevertheless,  the  transformation  that  man  had  accom- 
pUshed  of  his  own  past,  his  joys  and  sorrows,  his  labours, 
his  insights  and  desires,  the  deeds  of  his  ancestors,  —  the 
human  use  that  he  had  made  of  the  world.  This  was  the 
body  of  idea  and  emotion  to  which  the  poet  appealed 
in  that  age,  precisely  as  our  historical  novehsts  now  ap- 
peal to  our  own  knowledge  of  history  and  pre-estab- 
ished  emotion  with  regard  to  it,  our  patriotism.  Here 
they  found  a  language  already  full  charged  with  emotion 
and  intelligence,  of  which  they  could  avail  themselves, 
and  speaking  which  they  spoke  with  the  voices  of  a 
thousand  years.  Nevertheless,  it  was  at  best  a  language 
like  others,  and  subject  to  change  and  decay  in  expres- 
sive power.  The  time  came  when,  the  creative  impulse  in 
mythology  having  ceased  and  its  forms  being  fixed,  the 
mythic  world  lay  behind  the  mind  of  the  advancing  race 
which  had  now  attained  conceptions  of  the  physical 
universe,  and  especially  ideas  of  the  moral  Ufe,  which 
were  no  longer  capable  of  being  held  in  and  expressed 
by  the  mythic  world,  but  exceeded  the  bounds  of  ear- 
lier thought  and  feeling  and  broke  the  ancient  moulds. 
Then  it  was  that  Plato  desired  to  exile  the  poets  and  their 
mythology  from  the  state.  He  could  not  be  content, 
either,  with  a  certain  change  that  had  occurred ;  for  the 
creative  power  in  mythology  having  long  ceased,  as  I 

[43] 


THE  TORCH 
have  said,  the  imagination  put  forth  a  new  function  —  a 
meditative  power  —  and  brooding  over  the  old  fables  of 
the  world  of  the  gods  discovered  in  them,  not  a  record 
of  fact,  but  an  allegorical  meaning,  a  higher  truth  which 
the  fable  contained.  Mythology  passed  thus  into  an  em- 
blematic stage,  in  which  it  was  again  long  used  by  man- 
kind, as  a  language  of  universal  power.  Plato,  however, 
could  not  free  himself  from  the  mythologic  habit  of  im- 
agination so  planted  in  his  race,  and  found  the  most  ef- 
fective expression  for  his  ideas  in  the  myths  of  his  own 
invention  which  he  made  up  by  a  dexterous  and  poetic 
adaptation  of  the  old  elements;  and  others  later  than 
Plato  have  found  it  hard  to  disuse  the  mythologic  lan- 
guage ;  for,  although  the  old  religion  as  a  thing  of  faith  and 
practice  died  away,  it  survived  as  a  thing  of  form  and 
feature  in  art,  as  a  phase  of  natural  symbolism  and  of 
inward  loveliness  of  action  and  passion  in  poetry,  as  a 
chapter  of  romance  in  the  history  of  the  race ;  and  the 
modern  Uteratures  of  Europe  are,  in  large  measure, 
unintelhgible  without  this  key. 

The  second  great  transformation  of  history  is  chivalry. 
Here  the  phenomenon  is  nearer  in  time  and  hes  more 
within  the  field  of  observation  and  knowledge ;  it  is  pos- 
sible to  trace  the  stages  of  the  growth  of  the  story  of  Ro- 
land with  some  detail  and  precision;  but,  on  the  other 
hand,  the  Arthur  myth  reaches  far  back  into  the  be- 

[44] 


THE  LANGUAGE  OF  ALL  THE  WORLD 
ginnings  of  Celtic  imagination,  and  all  such  race-myths 
tend  to  appropriate  and  embody  in  themselves  the  char- 
acteristic features  both  of  one  another  and  of  whatever  is 
held  to  be  precious  and  significant  in  history  or  even  in 
classical  and  Eastern  legend.  The  true  growth,  however, 
is  that  feudal  culture,  which  we  know  as  knighthood, 
working  out  its  own  ideal  of  action  and  character  and 
sentiment  on  a  basis  of  bravery,  courtesy,  and  piety, 
and  thereby  generating  patterns  of  knighthood,  typical 
careers,  and  in  the  end  an  imaginative  interpretation  of 
the  purest  spiritual  Hfe  itself  in  the  various  legends  of 
the  Holy  Grail.  As  in  the  pagan  world  the  forms  and 
fables  of  mythology  and  their  interaction  downward  with 
the  human  world  furnished  the  imaginative  interpreta- 
tion of  life  as  it  then  was,  so  for  the  mediaeval  age,  the 
figures  and  tales  of  chivalry  and  their  interaction  upward 
with  the  spiritual  world  of  Christianity,  and  also  with  the 
magic  of  diabolism  round  about,  furnished  the  imagina- 
tive interpretation  of  that  later  hfe  It  was  this  new  body 
of  ideas  and  emotion  in  the  minds  of  men  that  the  me- 
diaeval poets  appealed  to,  availed  themselves  of,  and  so 
spoke  a  language  of  imagery  and  passion  that  was  a 
world-language,  charged  as  I  have  said  with  the  thought 
and  feeling,  the  tradition,  of  a  long  age.  What  happened 
to  the  language  of  mythology,  happened  also  to  this  lan- 
guage; it  lost  the  power  of  reahty,  and  men  arose  who, 

[45] 


THE  TORCH 
being  in  advance  of  its  conceptions  of  life,  desired  to  ex- 
ile it,  denounce  it  or  laugh  it  out  of  existence,  like 
Ascham  in  England,  and  Cervantes  in  Spain.  It  also 
suffered  that  late  change  into  an  allegorical  or  emble- 
matic meaning,  and  had  a  second  life  in  that  form  as  in 
the  notable  instance  of  Spenser's  "Faerie  Queene."  It 
also  could  not  die,  but  —  just  as  mythology  revived 
in  the  Alexandrian  poets  for  a  season,  and  fed  Theo- 
critus and  Virgil  —  chivalry  was  re-bom  in  the  last  cen- 
tury, and  in  Tennyson's  Arthur,  and  in  Wagner's  "  Par- 
sifal "  lived  again  in  two  great  expressions  of  ideal  life. 

The  third  great  transformation  of  history  is  contained 
in  the  Scriptures.  The  Bible  is,  in  itself,  a  singularly 
complete  expression  of  the  whole  life  of  a  race  in  one 
volume  —  its  faith  and  history  blending  in  one  body  of 
poetry,  thought  and  imaginative  chronicle.  It  contains  a 
celestial  world  in  association  with  human  events ;  its  pa- 
triarchs are  like  demi-gods,  and  it  has  heroes,  legends, 
tales  in  good  numbers,  and  much  romantic  and  passion- 
ate hfe,  on  the  human  side,  besides  its  great  stores  of 
spirituality.  In  literary  power  it  achieves  the  highest  in 
the  kinds  of  composition  that  it  uses.  It  is  as  a  whole, 
regarded  purely  from  the  human  point  of  view,  not  un- 
fairly to  be  compared  in  mass,  variety,  and  scope  of  ex- 
pression, with  mjlhology  and  chivalry  as  constituting  a 
third  great  form  of  imaginative  language;  nor  has  its  his- 

[46] 


THE  LANGUAGE  OF  ALL  THE  WORLD 
tory  been  dissimilar  in  the  Christian  world  to  which  it 
came  with  something  of  that  same  remoteness  in  time  and 
reality  that  belonged  equally  to  mythology  and  chivalry. 
It  was  first  used  in  a  positive  manner,  as  a  thing  of  fact 
and  solid  belief;  but  there  soon  grew  up,  you  remember, 
in  the  Christian  world  that  habit  of  finding  a  hidden 
meaning  in  its  historical  record,  of  turning  it  to  a  parable, 
of  extracting  from  it  an  allegorical  signification.  It  be- 
came, not  only  in  parts  but  as  a  whole,  emblematic,  and 
its  interpretation  as  such  was  the  labour  of  centuries. 
This  is  commonly  stated  as  the  source  of  that  universal 
mood  of  allegorizing  which  characterized  the  mediaeval 
world,  and  was  as  strongly  felt  in  secular  as  in  religious 
writers.  Its  historical  tales,  its  theories  of  the  uni- 
verse, its  cruder  morals  in  the  Jewish  ages,  have  been 
scoffed  at,  just  as  was  the  case  with  the  Greek  myth,  from 
the  Apostate  to  Voltaire  and  later;  but  how  great  are  its 
powers  as  a  language  is  seen  in  the  completeness  with 
which  it  tyrannized  over  the  Puritan  life  in  England  and 
made  its  liistory,  its  ideas,  its  emotions  the  habitual  and 
almost  exclusive  speech  of  that  strong  Cromwellian  age. 
In  our  country  here  in  New  England  it  gave  the  mould 
of  imagination  to  our  ancestors  for  two  whole  centuries. 
A  book,  which  contains  such  power  that  it  can  make 
itself  the  language  of  life  through  so  many  centuries  and 
in  such  various  peoples  is  to  be  reckoned  as  one  of  the 

[47] 


THE  TORCH 
greatest    instruments    of    race-expression    that    man 
possesses. 

Mythology,  chivalry,  the  Scriptures  are  the  tongues  of 
the  imagination.  It  is  far  more  important  to  know  them 
than  to  learn  French  or  German  or  Italian,  or  Latin  or 
Greek;  they  are  three  branches  of  that  universal  lan- 
guage which  though  vainly  sought  on  the  lips  of  men  is 
found  in  their  minds  and  hearts.  To  omit  these  in  edu- 
cation is  to  defraud  youth  of  its  inheritance ;  it  is  like  de- 
stroying a  long-developed  organ  of  the  body,  hke  putting 
out  the  eye  or  silencing  the  nerves  of  hearing.  Nor  is  it 
enough  to  look  them  up  in  encyclopaedias  and  notes,  and 
so  obtain  a  piecemeal  information;  one  must  grow  fa- 
miliar with  these  forms  of  beauty,  forms  of  honour,  forms 
of  righteousness,  have  something  of  the  same  sense  of 
their  reality  as  that  felt  by  Homer  and  Virgil,  by  the 
singer  of  "  Roland  "  and  the  chronicler  of  the  "  Mort  d' 
Arthur,"  by  St.  Augustine,  and  St.  Thomas.  He  must 
form  his  imagination  upon  these  idealities,  and  load  his 
heart  with  them;  else  many  a  masterpiece  of  the  human 
spirit  will  be  lost  to  him,  and  most  of  the  rest  will  be  im- 
paired. If  one  must  know  vocabulary  and  grammar 
before  he  can  understand  the  speech  of  the  mouth,  much 
more  must  he  know  well  mythology,  chivalry  and  Bible- 
lore  before  he  can  take  possession  of  the  wisdom  that  the 
race-mind  has  spoken,  the  beauty  it  has  moulded  life 

[48] 


THE  LANGUAGE  OF  ALL  THE  WORLD 
into,  as  a  thing  of  passion  and  action,  the  economy  of 
lucid  power  it  has  achieved  for  perfect  human  utterance, 
in  these  three  fundamental  forms  of  a  true  world-lan- 
guage. The  literature  of  the  last  century  is  permeated 
with  mythology,  chivalry  and  to  a  less  degree  with 
Scripture,  and  no  one  can  hope  to  assimilate  it,  to  re- 
ceive its  message,  unless  his  mind  is  drenched  with  these 
same  things ;  and  the  further  back  his  tastes  and  desires 
lead  him  into  the  literature  of  earlier  times,  the  greater 
will  be  his  need  of  this  education  in  the  material,  the 
modes  and  the  forms  of  past  imagination. 

It  may  be  that  a  fourth  great  tongue  of  the  imagina- 
tion is  now  being  shaped  upon  the  living  lips  of  men  in 
the  present  and  succeeding  ages.  If  it  be  so,  this  will  be 
the  work  of  the  democratic  idea,  which  is  now  still  at  the 
beginning  of  its  career;  but  since  mythology  and  chivalry 
had  their  development  in  living  men,  it  is  natural  to 
suppose  that  the  human  force  is  still  operative  in  our 
own  generation  as  it  once  was  in  those  of  Hellenic  and 
mediaeval  years.  The  characteristic  literature  of  de- 
mocracy is  that  of  its  ideas,  spiritualized  in  Shelley,  and 
that  of  the  common  lot  as  represented  in  the  sphere  of 
the  novel,  spiritualized  most  notably  in  Victor  Hugo.  In 
our  own  country  it  is  singular  to  observe  that  the  demo- 
cratic idea,  though  eflScient  in  politics,  does  not  yet  es- 
tablish itself  in  imaginative  literature  with  any  great 

[49] 


THE  TORCH 
power  of  brilliancy,  does  not  create  great  democratic 
types,  or  in  any  way  express  itself  adequately.  This 
democratic  idea,  in  Dickens  for  example,  uses  the  ex- 
perience of  daily  life,  that  is,  contemporary  history,  or  at 
least  it  uses  an  artistic  arrangement  of  such  experience ; 
but  the  novel  as  a  whole  has  given  us  in  regard  to  the 
common  lot,  rather  a  description  of  life  in  its  variety  than 
that  concentrated  and  essential  significance  of  life  which 
we  call  typical.  If  democracy  in  its  future  course  should 
evolve  such  a  typical  and  spiritualized  embodiment  of 
itself  as  chivalry  found  in  Arthur  and  the  Round 
Table,  or  as  the  heroic  age  of  Greece  found  in  Achilles 
and  the  Trojan  War,  or  as  the  genius  of  Rome  found 
in  Aeneas  and  his  fortunes,  then  imagination  —  race- 
imagination  will  be  enriched  by  this  fourth  great  instru- 
ment ;  but  this  is  to  cast  the  horoscope  of  too  distant  an 
hour.  I  introduce  the  thought  only  for  the  sake  of  includ- 
ing in  this  broad  survey  of  race-imagination  that  expe- 
rience of  the  present  day,  that  history  in  the  contempo- 
rary process  of  being  transformed,  out  of  which  the  mass 
of  the  books  of  the  day  are  now  made. 

Let  me  recur  now  to  that  principle  of  selection  which 
through  the  cumulative  action  of  repeated  preferences  of 
phrase  and  image  fixes  a  habit  of  choice  which  at  last 
stamps  the  diction  of  a  man,  a  school  or  an  age.  It  is 
plain  that  in  what  I  have  called  the  transformation  of 

[50] 


THE  LANGUAGE  OF  ALL  THE  WORLD 

history,  of  which  literature  is  the  express  image,  there  is 
the  same  principle  of  selection  which,  working  through 
long  periods  of  race-Hfe,  results  at  last  in  those  ideaUties 
of  persons  and  events  in  which  inhere  most  powerfully 
those  overtones  of  beauty,  honour  and  righteousness 
that  the  race  has  found  most  precious  both  for  idea 
and  emotion ;  and  to  these  are  to  be  added  what  I  have 
had  no  time  to  include  and  discuss,  the  idealities  of 
persons  and  events  found  outside  mythology,  chivalry 
and  Scripture,  in  the  work  of  individual  genius  like 
Shakspere,  which  nevertheless  have  the  same  ground 
in  history,  in  experience,  that  in  them  is  similarly 
transformed.  Life-experience  spiritualized  is  the  formula 
of  all  great  literature ;  it  may  range  from  the  experience 
of  a  single  Ufe,  like  Sidney's  in  his  sonnets  to  that  of  an 
empire  in  Virgil's  "  Aeneid, "  or  of  a  religion  in  Dante's 
"  Comedy. "  In  either  case  the  formula  which  makes 
it  literature  is  the  same.  I  have  illustrated  the  point 
by  the  obvious  spiritualizations  of  history.  Race- 
life,  from  the  point  of  view  of  literature,  results  at  last 
in  these  moulds  of  imagination,  and  all  else  though 
slowly,  yet  surely,  drops  away  into  oblivion.  In  truth,  it 
is  only  by  being  thus  spiritualized  that  anything  human 
survives  from  the  past.  The  rose,  I  said,  has  been  so  dip- 
ped in  human  experience  that  it  is  less  a  thing  of  nature 
than  a  thing  of  passion.  In  the  same  way  Adonis,  Jason 

[51] 


THE  TORCH 
and  Achilles,  Roland  and  Arthur,  Lancelot,  Percival  and 
Galahad,  Romeo  and  Hamlet  have  drawn  into  them- 
selves such  myriads  of  human  Uves  by  admiration  and 
love  that  from  them  everything  material,  contemporary 
and  mortal  has  been  refined  away,  and  they  seem  to  all 
of  us  hke  figures  moving  in  an  immortal  air.  They  have 
achieved  the  eternal  world.  To  do  this  is  the  work  of  art. 
It  may  seem  a  fantastic  idea,  but  I  will  venture  the  say- 
ing of  it,  since  to  me  it  is  the  truth.  Art,  I  suppose,  you 
think  of  as  the  realm  and  privilege  of  selected  men,  of 
sculptors,  painters,  musicians,  poets,  men  of  genius  and 
having  something  that  has  always  been  called  divine  in 
their  faculty;  but  it  appears  to  me  that  art,  hke  genius, 
is  something  that  all  men  share,  that  it  is  the  stamp  of  the 
soul  in  every  one,  and  constitutes  their  true  and  imma- 
terial life.  The  soul  of  the  race,  as  it  is  seen  in  history 
and  disclosed  by  history,  is  an  artist  soul;  its  career  is  an 
artistic  career;  its  unerring  selective  power  expels  from 
its  memory  every  mortal  element  and  perserves  only  the 
essential  spirit,  and  thereof  builds  its  ideal  imaginative 
world  through  which  it  finds  its  true  expression ;  its  more 
perfect  comprehension  of  the  world  is  science,  its  more 
perfect  comprehension  of  its  own  nature  is  love, 
its  more  perfect  expression  of  its  remembered 
Ufe  is  art.  Mankind  is  the  grandest  and  surest 
artist  of  all,  and  history  as  it  clarifies  is,  in  pure  fact, 

[52] 


THE  LANGUAGE  OF  ALL  THE  WORLD 
an  artistic  process,   a  creation  in  its  fullness  of  the 
beautiful  soul. 

It  appears,  then,  that  the  language  of  literature  in  the 
race  is  a  perfected  nature  and  a  perfected  manhood  and 
a  perfected  divinity,  so  far  as  the  race  at  the  moment  can 
see  toward  perfection.  The  life  which  literature  builds 
up  ideally  out  of  the  material  of  experience  is  not  wholly 
a  past  life,  but  there  mingles  with  it  and  at  last  con- 
trols it  the  life  that  man  desires  to  live.  Fullness  of  Uf e  — 
that  fullness  of  action  which  is  poured  in  the  epic,  that 
fullness  of  passion  which  is  poured  in  the  drama,  that 
fullness  of  desire  that  is  poured  in  the  lyric  —  the  hfe 
of  which  man  knows  himself  capable  and  realizes  as  the 
opportunity  and  hope  of  life  —  this  is  the  hfe  that  liter- 
ature enthrones  in  its  dream.  You  have  heard  much  of 
the  will  to  believe  and  of  the  desire  to  Hve :  literature  is 
made  of  these  two,  warp  and  woof.  Race  after  race  be- 
lieves in  the  gods  it  has  come  to  know  and  in  the  heroes 
it  has  borne,  and  in  what  it  wishes  to  beheve  of  divine 
and  human  experience ;  and  the  Hfe  it  thus  ascribes  to  its 
gods  and  to  its  own  past  is  the  life  it  most  ardently  desires 
to  live.  Literature,  which  records  this,  is  thus  the  chief 
witness  to  the  nobility,  the  constancy  and  instancy  of 
man's  effort  for  perfection.  What  wonder,  then,  if  in  his 
sublimest  and  tenderest  song  there  steals  that  note  of 
melancholy  so  often  struck  by  the  greatest  masters  in 

[53] 


THE  TORCH 
the  crisis  and  climax  of  their  works,  and  which,  when  so 
struck,  has  more  of  the  infinite  in  it,  more  of  the  human 
in  it,  than  any  other  in  the  slowly  triumphant  theme ! 

To  sum  up  —  the  language  of  Uterature  is  experience ; 
the  language  of  race-hterature  is  race -experience,  or  his- 
tory, the  human  use  that  the  race  has  made  of  the  worid. 
The  law  appears  to  be  that  history  in  this  sense  is  slowly 
transformed  by  a  refining  and  spiritualizing  process  into 
an  imaginative  worid,  such  as  the  worid  of  mythology, 
chivalry  or  the  Scriptures,  and  that  this  world  in  turn 
becomes  emblematic  and  fades  away  into  an  expression 
of  abstract  truth.  The  crude  beginning  of  the  process  is 
seen  in  our  historical  fiction;  the  height  of  it  in  Arthur 
or  in  Odin ;  the  end  of  it  in  the  symbolic  or  allegoric  in- 
terpretation of  even  so  human  a  book  as  Virgil's  "  Ae- 
neid.  "  Human  desire  for  the  best  enters  into  this  process 
with  such  force  that  the  record  of  the  past  slowly 
changes  into  the  prophecy  of  the  future,  and  out  of  the 
passing  away  of  what  was  is  built  the  dream  of  what 
shall  be;  so  arises  in  race-life  the  creed  of  what  man 
wishes  to  believe  and  the  dream  of  the  life  he  desires  to 
live;  this  human  desire  for  belief  and  for  life  is,  in  the 
final  analysis,  the  principle  of  selection  whose  operation 
has  been  sketched,  and  on  its  validity  rests  the  validity 
and  truth  of  all  literature. 

[54] 


The  Torch 
m 


THE  TITAN  MYTH 
I 


I  propose  to-night  to  illustrate  by  the  specific  example  of 
the  Titan  Myth  how  it  is  that  Greek  mythology  is  a 
tongue  of  the  imagination  —  a  living  tongue  of  the  uni- 
versal imagination  of  men. 

The  Titan  Myth  —  I  wonder  what  it  means  to  you  ? 
The  Titans  were  the  earliest  children  of  the  earth,  elder 
than  the  Greek  gods  even,  and  were  the  sons  of  the 
the  Earth,  their  mother.  You  perhaps  think  of  them  as 
mere  giants,  such  as  Jack  killed  -—  mediaeval  monsters 
of  the  kin  of  Beauty  and  the  Beast.  Think  of  them 
rather  as  majestic  forms,  with  something  of  the  sweep 
and  mystery  of  those  figures  you  may  remember  out  of 
Ossian  and  his  misty  mountains,  with  the  largeness  and 
darkness  of  the  earth  in  them,  a  massive  dim-featured 
race,  but  with  an  earthly  rather  than  celestial  grandeur, 
embodiments  of  mighty  force  dull  to  beauty,  intelligence, 
light.  When  Zeus,  the  then  young  Olympian,  was  bom, 

[57] 


THE  TORCH 
and  with  him  the  other  deities  of  the  then  new  divine 
world  and  when  he  dethroned  his  father,  and  put  the  new 
gods  in  possession  of  the  universe,  these  children  of  the 
old  regime,  misliking  change,  took  the  father's  part,  and 
warred  on  the  usurper  of  ancient  power,  and  were  over- 
thrown by  his  lightnings,  and  mountains  were  piled  on 
them;  and  now  you  may  read  in  Longfellow  of  Encela- 
dus,  the  type  and  image  of  their  fate,  buried  under 
^tna  whose  earthquakes  are  the  struggling  of  the  great 
Titan  beneath.  This  was  the  war  of  the  Titans  and  the 
gods.  One  of  the  Titans,  however,  stood  apart  from  the 
rest,  being  wiser  than  they.  Prometheus  made  friends 
with  Zeus,  but  his  fortune  was  not  less  grievous  to  him; 
for  when  he  saw  that  Zeus  took  no  account  of  men  —  "  of 
miserable  men, "  but  yearned  to  destroy  them  from  the 
face  of  the  earth,  he  took  pity  on  mankind,  and  stole  for 
them  the  celestial  fire  and  gave  it  to  them,  for  until  then 
man  had  lived  a  life  of  mere  nature,  without  knowledge, 
or  any  arts,  not  even  that  of  agriculture.  Prometheus  was 
the  fire-bringer;  and,  bringing  fire,  he  brought  to  men  all 
the  uses  of  fire,  such  as  metal -working,  for  example,  and 
in  a  word  he  gave  to  mankind  its  entire  career,  the  long 
labour  of  progressive  civilization,  and  the  life  of  the 
spirit  itself  which  is  kindled,  as  we  say,  from  the  Pro- 
methean spark  within.  It  was  but  a  step  for  the  Pagan 
imagination,  at  a  later  stage,  to  think  of  this  patron  of 

[58] 


THE  TITAN  MYTH 
mankind  as  the  creator  of  men,  since  he  was  the  fosterer 
of  their  Uves ;  it  was  said  that  he  had  made  clay  images, 
and  moistened  these  with  holy  water,  so  that  they  be- 
came living  creatures  —  men.  Zeus  was  angered  by  this 
befriending  of  the  human  race;  and  he  flung  Prome- 
theus upon  a  mountain  of  the  Caucasus,  chained  him 
there,  and  planted  a  vulture  to  eat  always  on  his  entrails ; 
and  in  the  imagination  of  men  there  he  hangs  to  this  day. 
Yet  there  was  one  condition  on  which  he  might  be  re- 
leased and  again  received  into  heaven.  He  alone  knew 
the  secret  of  the  fall  of  Zeus  —  the  means  by  which  it 
would  be  brought  about ;  and  if  he  would  tell  this  secret, 
so  that  Zeus  might  avoid  the  danger  as  was  possible,  and 
thereby  his  unjust  reign  become  perpetual,  Prometheus 
might  save  himself.  But  the  Titan  so  loved  justice  that  he 
kept  silence,  knowing  that  in  the  course  of  ages  at  last 
Zeus  would  fall.  This  was  the  myth  of  Prometheus. 

Of  the  aspects  which  the  entire  legend  presents  in 
literature,  there  are  three  which  stand  out.  I  shall  ask 
you  to  consider  the  first  as  the  cosmic  idea  —  the  idea  of 
the  law  of  human  progress  that  it  contains.  To  the  Greek 
mind  the  development  of  the  universe  consisted  in  the 
supplanting  of  a  lower  by  a  higher  power,  under  the  will 
of  a  supreme  fate  or  necessity  which  was  above  both 
gods  and  men:  after  Uranus  was  Chronos,  after  Chro- 
nos  was  Zeus,  after  Zeus  there  would  be  other  gods.  The 

[59] 


THE  TORCH 

Greeks  were  themselves  a  higher  power  in  their  world, 
and  as  such  had  conquered  the  Persians;  theirs  was  the 
victory  of  light  over  darkness,  of  civilization  over  bar- 
barism, and  therefore  on  the  walls  of  their  great  temple, 
the  Parthenon,  which  was  the  embodiment  of  their  spir- 
itual consciousness  as  a  race,  they  depicted  three  great 
mythic  events  symbolizing  the  victory  of  the  higher 
power  —  that  is,  the  war  of  the  Centaurs  and  the  Lapi- 
thee,  of  the  Athenians  and  the  Amazons,  and  of  the  gods 
and  the  Titans.  This  cosmic  idea  —  the  Greek  concep- 
tion of  progress  —  it  is  more  convenient  to  delay  to  the 
next  lecture.  Secondly,  I  shall  ask  you  to  consider  the 
conception  of  the  friend  of  man  suffering  for  his  sake  — 
one  that  without  irreverence  may  be  designated  as  the 
Christ-idea.  This  phase  of  the  myth  naturally  has  re- 
ceived less  development  in  literature,  inasmuch  as  the 
ideas  and  emotions  it  embodies  find  expression  inevit- 
ably and  almost  exclusively  in  the  symbol  of  the  Cross 
and  the  life  that  led  up  thereto.  But  for  those  who,  in  the 
chances  of  time  have  stood  apart  from  the  estabhshed 
faith  of  Christendom,  and  have  not  seldom  encountered 
the  creed  and  practice  of  their  age  in  persecution,  being 
victims  for  the  sake  of  reason  —  for  these  men,  the 
figure  of  Prometheus  has  been  in  the  place  of  the  Cross, 
an  image  of  themselves,  their  prototype.  The  expres- 
sion of  this  particular  idea,  however,  has  been  sUght 

[60] 


THE  TITAN  MYTH 
in    literature;  but  it  naturally  appears  there,  and  Pro- 
metheus has  come  to  be  the  characteristic  symbol  of  the 
pecuhar   suffering  of   genius;    so  Longfellow    uses    it 
in  his  "  Prometheus.  " 

"All  is  but  a  symbol  painted 

Of  the  Poet,  Prophet,  Seer; 
Only  those  are  crowned  and  sainted 
Who  with  grief  have  been  acquainted. 

Making  nations  nobler,  freer." 

Under  this  aspect  Prometheus  is  the  martyr  of  humanity. 
Thirdly,  I  shall  ask  you  to  consider  the  conception  of 
Prometheus,  not  as  an  individual,  but  as  identified  with 
mankind,  as  mankind  itself  suffering  in  all  its  race-life 
and  throughout  its  history,  wretched,  tyrannized  over  by 
some  dark  and  unjust  necessity,  yet  unterrified,  reso- 
lute, invincible  in  its  faith  in  that 

"One  far-off  divine  event 
To  which  the  whole  creation  moves" 

The  imagination,  age  after  age,  finds  in  Prometheus  such 
a  symbol  of  man's  race-fife.  This  is  to  conceive  of  Pro- 
metheus as  the  idea  of  humanity. 

iEschylus  fixed  the  form  of  the  Titan  for  the  imagin- 
ation and  surrounded  it  with  the  characteristic  scene. 
He  nailed  Prometheus  in  chains  riveted  into  the  rock,  the 

[61] 


THE  TORCH 
vast  desolate  cliffs  of  the  Caucasus,  an  indistinct  and 
mighty  figure,  frosted  with  the  night  and  watching  the 
stars  in  their  courses  with  lidless  eyes,  the  dark  vulture 
hovering  in  his  bosom.  Perhaps  I  can  make  the  scene 
more  real  to  you  by  a  passage  from  a  letter  of  a  friend 
who  last  spring  was  in  that  solitude.  "  All  the  forenoon, " 
he  says,  "I  have  been  travelling  forward  beneath  the 
giant  wall  of  the  frosty  Caucasus.  The  snow-clad  plain 
serves  as  a  dazzling  foreground  to  the  towering  rugged 
peaks  so  sharply  defined  in  steel  white  and  dull  black 
wherever  the  snow  leaves  the  beetling  rock  bare.  The 
gorges  and  ravines  which  are  here  and  there  visible  look 
like  old-time  scars  of  jagged  wounds  on  the  sullen  face  of 
the  mountains.  The  dreary  solitude  of  the  scene  is  very 
impressive.  Far  off  yonder  in  the  distance  I  can  picture 
the  chill  and  desolate  vulture-peak  where  Prometheus, 
in  his  galling  chains,  longed  for  the  day  to  give  peace  to 
' starry -kirtled  night'  (if  I  remember  my  ^Eschylus 
rightly)  and  yearned  for  the  sun  to  arise  and  dispell  the 
hoar-frost  of  dawn.  It  all  comes  up  again  before  my 
mind  in  this  far-away  solitary  region. "  Tliither  to  this 
scene,  that  my  friend  describes,  came  with  comfort  or 
counsel  the  daughters  of  the  Ocean,  and  old  Oceanus 
himself,  the  Titan's  brother,  and  lo  on  her  wanderings, 
and  Hermes,  the  messenger  of  Zeus,  to  make  terms  with 
Prometheus,  or  to  inflict  new  tortures  should  he  refuse. 

[62] 


THE  TITAN  MYTH 
But  Prometheus  remained  the  resolute  and  faithful  suf- 
ferer :  there  stretched  on  the  rock  he  would  await  the  sure 
coming  of  that  justice  which  is  above  even  the  heavens 
of  Zeus  and  contains  and  orders  even  them.  It  is  a  sub- 
lime moral  situation.  Who  could  ever  forget  that  figure, 
once  stamped  on  his  imagination,  though  but  a  school- 
boy ?  So  Byron  remembered  his  Harrow  days :  "  Of  the 
'  Prometheus  '  of  vEschylus,  "  he  says : "  I  was  passionate- 
ly fond  as  a  boy.  It  was  one  of  the  Greek  dramas  we  used 
to  read  three  times  a  year  at  Harrow.  Indeed,  it  and  the 
Medea  were  the  only  ones,  except  the  '  Seven  Against 
Thebes,'  which  pleased  me.  The  '  Prometheus,'  if  not  ex- 
actly in  my  plan  has  always  been  so  much  in  my  head 
that  I  well  understand  how  its  influences  have  passed 
into  all  I  have  done. "  It  goes  with  this  acknowledg- 
ment, and  bespealvs  the  critic's  acute  penetration,  to 
find  Jeffrey  affirming  that  there  is  no  work  of  modem 
literature  that  more  than  Byron's  "  Manfred "  ap- 
proaches the  "  Prometheus  "  of  iEschylus.  Byron  only 
illustrates  the  fascination  that  this  myth  has  for  the 
race;  the  world  will  never  let  go  of  this  symbol  of 
itself. 

The  moment  and  the  cause,  the  invincible  resolution 
denying  the  will  of  the  apparent  gods  of  the  hour  in 
obedience  to  the  higher  light  within,  are  the  same  that 
have  nailed  all  martyrs  to  the  cross,  sent  patriots  to  rot 

[63] 


THE  TORCH 

in  prisons,  and  borne  on  the  leaders  of  all  forlorn  hopes 
in  their  death-charges,  and  of  these  the  history  of  the  last 
century  gives  many  a  modern  instance.  In  our  own 
time  Siberia  has  been  one  vast  Caucasus;  I  remember 
when  not  long  ago  its  name  was  Crete ;  and  now  't  is 
Macedonia  —  they  are  all  tracts  of  that  desolation  that 
swallows  up  in  its  voiceless  solitude  and  buries  from  the 
ears  of  God  and  man  the  human  cry.  In  the  mind  and 
memory  of  the  race  there  are  two  great  mountains ;  over 
against  Sinai  towers  the  peak  of  the  Caucasus  with  per- 
petual challenge;  yet  they  are  twin  peaks  —  one,  the 
mount  of  faith  in  God,  the  other,  the  mount  of  faith  in 
man.  You  know  how  the  race,  from  time  to  time,  as  great 
moods  sweep  over  it  —  the  mood  of  asceticism,  or  of 
Christian  chivalry,  or  of  world-conquest,  sets  up  some 
historic  figure  as  the  type  and  expression  of  this  mood  — 
some  St.  Francis,  or  PhiUp  Sidney,  or  Napoleon;  this  is 
because  the  race  sees  in  these  men  a  greater  image  of  it- 
self in  those  particular  moods.  So,  in  a  more  abstract  way 
the  race  takes  some  part  of  its  self-consciousness  —  say, 
its  perception  of  what  is  evil  in  its  own  heart  —  and  puts 
it  outside  of  itself  so  as  to  see  it  better,  projects  or  ob- 
jectifies itself,  as  we  say,  in  an  image,  Hke  Mephisto- 
pheles ;  it  sees  in  Mephistopheles  itself  in  a  certain  mood 
—  a  mood  of  mocking  denial  of  all  good.  So,  in  its  own 
history  and  memory  the  race  perceives  that  often  its 

[64] 


THE  TITAN  MYTH 
greatest  men,  those  who  have  been  its  civihzers,  have 
been  victims  of  the  powers  of  their  day,  and  have  served 
the  race  and  carried  on  its  Hfe  by  fidehty  to  their  own 
hearts  and  the  truth  in  them  in  spite  of  the  utmost  suf- 
fering that  could  be  inflicted  on  them.  The  race  thinks  of 
these  men  as  constituting  its  own  hfe,  gathers  and  blends 
them  in  one  being  and  finds  that  being  —  the  type  that 
stands  for  its  continuous  hfe  —  in  Prometheus.  In  him 
the  race  projects  —  as  I  have  said  —  or  objectifies  itself 
in  the  mood  of  suffering  the  worst  for  the  good  of  men, 
with  undismayed  courage  and  unbroken  will.  Prome- 
theus is  man  as  he  knows  himself  in  history,  the  im- 
mortal sufferer  under  injustice  bringing  even  by  his 
sorrows  the  higher  justice  that  shall  at  last 
prevail  —  he  is  this  figure  set  clear  and  separate 
before  the  mind:  he  is  the  idea  of  humanity, 
conceived  in  the  characteristic  act  of  its  noblest  Hfe  — 
he  is  mankind. 

I  dwelt  in  the  last  lecture  on  the  treasure  that  the  race- 
imagination  possesses  in  the  Greek  myths,  as  a  means  of 
expression;  in  the  whole  inheritance  of  our  literature 
there  is  nothing  that  the  poet  finds  so  great  a  gift  as  these 
forms  and  tales  of  the  mythic  world  in  which  the  work 
of  creation  is  already  half  done  for  him,  and  the  storing 
of  ideas  and  emotions  has  been  accomplished,  so  that 
with  a  word  he  can  release  in  the  mind  the  flood  of  mean- 

[65] 


THE  TORCH 

ing  they  contain,  as  if  he  pushed  an  electric  button;  they 
are  to  him  what  the  common  law  is  to  a  lawyer  —  the 
stored  results  of  the  past,  in  experience  and  principle; 
he  has  only  to  adopt  them  into  his  human  verse,  as  he 
adopts  into  his  verse  of  nature  the  Andes  and  Ararat.  It 
was  not  surprising  that  such  a  tale  as  the  Titan  Myth 
should  be  among  the  chief  memories  of  the  race,  never 
wholly  forgotten;  yet  it  waited  for  its  moment.  After  the 
first  mention  of  it  in  literature  three  thousand  years  went 
by,  before  the  moment  came.  Then  the  French  Revolu- 
tion struck  its  hour.  It  is  true  that  the  myth  stirred  in  the 
Renaissance  when  all  things  Greek  revived,  and  Cal- 
deron,  the  great  Spanish  poet,  treated  some  minor  as- 
pects of  it;  but,  in  and  about  the  Revolution,  it  was 
handled  repeatedly  by  great  poets  who  strove  to  recast 
the  story  and  use  it  to  express  the  ideas  and  emotions 
of  their  own  age.  Goethe  in  his  youth,  and  the  Germans 
—  Herder  and  Schlegel,  each  wrote  a  Prometheus;  in 
Italy  Monti  took  the  subject;  in  England  Landor  and 
Byron  touched  it  lightly,  and  Keats  and  Shelley  made  it 
the  matter  of  great  poems ;  and  later,  in  France,  where 
Voltaire  had  approached  it,  Victor  Hugo  and  Edgar 
Quinet  elaborated  it;  nor  do  these  names  exhaust  the 
list  of  those  who  in  the  last  century  made  it  a  principal 
theme  of  verse.  This  re-birth  was  a  natural  one ;  for  the 
French    Revolution,    which    you    remember    Wendell 

[66] 


THE  TITAN  MYTH 
Phillips  in  his  great  Harvard  speech  described  as  "the 
most  unmixed  blessing  that  ever  befell  mankind "  — 
the  French  Revolution  was  rooted  in  the  idea  of  hu- 
manity and  was  the  cause  of  humanity.  Moreover,  the 
Revolution  has  a  Titanic  quality  in  itself;  there  is  the 
feeling  of  large  earth-might  in  the  struggle  of  the  heavy 
masses  of  the  darkened  people,  peasant-born;  and  in 
their  revolt  against  the  kingdoms  of  the  world  whose 
serfs  they  were,  there  was  the  sense  of  a  strife  with  the 
careless  luxury  of  the  unjust  gods;  there  was  in  the 
wretchedness  of  the  European  peoples  the  state  of  man 
that  Prometheus  pitied  when  he  rebuked  Zeus  for  taking 
no  account  of  men  —  "of  miserable  men;"  and  in  the 
tumult  and  ardour  and  invincible  faith  of  the  Revolu- 
tion there  was  both  the  Titanic  atmosphere  and  the 
Promethean  spirit.  Shelley  was  the  poet  through  whom 
the  Uterary  expression  of  the  Revolution  was  to  be 
poured.  It  is  necessary  to  mark  the  time  precisely.  The 
Revolution  had  flamed,  and  in  Napoleon,  whom  more 
than  one  poet  celebrated  as  the  Prometheus  of  the  age, 
had  apparently  flamed  out.  The  Revolution,  as  a  poUti- 
cal  idea  seemed  to  have  failed,  and  Europe  sank  back 
into  the  arms  of  king  and  priest.  It  was  then  that  these 
great  Englishmen,  Byron  and  Shelley,  in  their  youth 
took  up  the  fallen  cause  and  bore  it  onward  in  their 
hands  till  Byron  died  for  it  in  the  war  of  Greek  Inde- 

[67] 


THE  TORCH 

pendence  and  Shelley,  having  sung  his  song,  sank  in  the 
waters  of  the  Mediterranean  Sea. 

Shelley  came  to  this  subject  naturally  and  through 
years  of  unconscious  preparation ;  and  when  the  moment 
of  creation  came,  he  felt  the  Titanic  quahty,  that  I 
spoke  of,  in  the  Revolution,  felt  the  Promethean  security 
of  victory  it  contained  —  felt,  too,  the  Promethean  suf- 
fering which  was  the  heart  of  mankind  as  he  saw  it  sur- 
veying Europe  in  his  day,  and  knew  it  in  his  own  bosom 
as  well.  He  conceived  of  Prometheus  as  mankind,  of  his 
history  and  fate  as  the  destiny  of  man ;  and  being  full  of 
that  far  sight  of  Prometheus  which  saw  the  victorious 
end  —  being  as  full  of  it  as  the  wheel  of  Ezekiel  was  full 
of  eyes  —  he  saw,  as  the  centre  of  all  vision,  Prometheus 
Unbound  —  the  millennium  of  mankind.  He  imagined 
the  process  of  that  great  liberation  and  its  crowning 
prosperities.  This  is  his  poem.  In  this  poem  the  Revolu- 
tion as  a  moral  idea  reached  its  height;  that  is  what 
makes  it,  from  the  social  point  of  view,  the  race-point 
of  view,  the  greatest  work  of  the  last  century  in  creative 
imagination  —  for  it  is  the  summary  and  centre,  in  the 
world  of  art,  of  the  greatest  power  in  that  century  —  the 
power  of  the  idea  of  humanity.  I  shall  present  only  the 
cardinal  phases  of  the  dramatic  situation,  in  the  poem, 
and  of  the  moral  idea  by  which  it  is  solved. 

The  poem  opens  in  the  Caucasus,  with  Prometheus 
[68] 


THE  TITAN  MYTH 
bound  to  the  rock,  an  indistinct  figure  such  as  I  have  de- 
scribed him ;  his  form  is  left  undefined  —  he  is  a  voice  in 
the  vast  soHtudes;  and  his  first  speech,  which  discloses 
the  situation,  makes  you  aware  of  physical  suffering, 
mental  anguish,  an  undismayed  and  patient  will,  an  un- 
conquerable faith  —  these  are  the  qualities  which  make 
him  an  elemental  being  and  characterize  him  at  once.  It 
is  an  J^schylean  speech,  phrases  from  ^schylus  are 
welded  into  it;  but  the  moral  grandeur  of  Prometheus  — 
all,  that  is,  except  the  historical  and  physical  features  of 
the  scene  —  bears  the  creative  mark  of  Shelley's  own 
sublimity  of  conception. 

*'  Monarch  of  Gods  and  Daemons,  and  all  Spirits 
But  One,  who  throng  those  bright  and  rolling  loorlds 
Which  Thou  and  I  alone  of  living  things 
Behold  with  sleepless  eyes!  regard  this  Earth 
Made  multitudinous  with  thy  slaves,  whom  thou 
Requitest  for  knee-worship,  prayer,  and  praise. 
And  toil,  and  hecatombs  of  broken  hearts. 
With  fear  and  self-contempt  and  barren  hope. 
Whilst  me,  who  am  thy  foe,  eyeless  in  hate. 
Hast  thou  made  reign  and  triumph,  to  thy  scorn 
O'er  mine  own  misery  and  thy  vain  revenge. 
Three  thousand  years  of  sleep-unsheltered  hours. 
And  moments  aye  divided  by  keen  pangs 
Till  they  seemed  years,  torture  and  solitude. 
Scorn  and  despair,  —  these  are  m,ine  empire:  — 

[69] 


THE  TORCH 

More  glorious  far  than  thai  which  thou  surveyest 
From  thine  unenvied  throne,  O,  Mighty  God! 
Almighty,  Imd  I  deigned  to  share  the  shame 
Of  thine  ill  tyranny,  and  hung  not  here 
Nailed  to  this  wall  of  eagle-baffling  mountain. 
Black,  wintry,  dead,  unmeasured;  vjithoid  herb. 
Insect,  or  beast,  or  shape  or  sound  of  life. 
Ah  me!  alas,  pain,  pain  ever,  for  ever! 

"  No  change,  no  pause,  no  hope!  Yet  I  endure. 
I  ask  the  Earth,  have  not  the  mountains  felt  ? 
I  ask  yon  Heaven,  the  all-beholding  Sun, 
Has  it  not  seen  ?  The  Sea,  in  storm  or  calm. 
Heaven  s  ever-changing  Shadow,  spread  below. 
Have  its  deaf  waves  not  heard  my  agony? 
Ah  me!  alas,  pain,  pain  ever,  for  ever! 

"  The  crawling  glaciers  pierce  me  with  the  spears 
Of  their  moon-freezing  crystals,  the  bright  chains 
Eat  with  their  burning  cold  into  my  bones. 
Heaven  s  winged  hound,  polluting  from  thy  lips 
His  beak  in  poison  not  his  own,  tears  up 
My  heart;  and  shapeless  sights  come  wandering  by. 
The  ghastly  people  of  the  realm  of  dream, 
Mocking  me:  and  the  Earthquake-fiends  are  charged 
To  wrench  the  rivets  from  my  quivering  wounds 
When  the  rocks  split  and  close  again  behind: 
While  from  their  loud  abysses  howling  throng 
The  genii  of  the  storm,  urging  the  rage 
Of  whirlwind,  and  afflict  me  with  keen  hail. 
[70] 


THE  TITAN  MYTH 

And  yet  to  me  welcome  is  day  and  night. 

Whether  one  breaks  the  hoar  frost  of  the  morn. 

Or  starry,  dim,  and  slow,  the  other  climbs 

The  leaden-coloured  east;  for  then  they  lead 

The  wingless,  crawling  hours,  one  among  whom 

—  As  some  dark  Priest  hales  the  reluctant  victim  — 

Shall  drag  thee,  cruel  King,  to  kiss  the  blood 

From  these  pale  feet,  which  then  might  trample  thee 

If  they  disdained  not  such  a  prostrate  slave. 

Disdain!  Ah  no!  I  pity  thee.  What  ruin 

Will  hunt  thee  undefended  through  the  wide  Heavenl 

How  will  thy  soul,  cloven  to  its  depth  with  terror. 

Gape  like  a  hell  within!  I  speak  in  grief 

Not  exultation,  for  I  hate  no  more. 

As  then  ere  misery  made  me  wise.  The  curse 

Once  breathed  on  thee  I  would  recall.  Ye  Mountains, 

Whose  many-voiced  Echoes,  through  the  mist 

Of  cataracts,  flung  the  thunder  of  that  spell! 

Ye  icy  Springs,  stagnant  with  wrinkling  frost. 

Which  vibrated  to  hear  me,  and  then  crept 

Shuddering  through  India!  Thou  serenest  Air, 

Through  which  the  Sun  walks  burning  without  beams! 

And  ye  swift  Whirlwinds,  who  on  poi.sed  wings 

Hung  mute  and  moveless  o'er  yon  hushed  abyss. 

As  thunder,  louder  than  your  own,  made  rock 

The  orbed  world!  If  then  my  words  had  power. 

Though  I  am  changed  so  that  aught  evil  wish 

Is  dead  within;  although  no  memory  be 

Of  what  is  hate,  let  them  not  lose  it  now! 

What  was  that  curse?  for  ye  all  heard  me  speak." 

[71] 


THE  TORCH 
Prometheus's  character,  you  observe,  is  developed  in 
the  point  that  he  no  longer  hates  Zeus,  but  is  filled  with 
pity  for  liim.  Later  in  the  scene  the  Furies  enter,  to  tor- 
ure  the  Titan  with  new  torments.  What  torments  will  be 
the  most  piercing  to  the  suffering  spirit  of  man  —  the 
spirit  that  suffers  in  advancing  human  welfare  ?  Will  it 
not  be  the  fact  that  the  gifts  he  has  given  man  have 
proved  evil  gifts,  and  that  in  the  effort  for  perfection 
man  has  but  the  more  heaped  on  himself  damnation  ? 
The  thought  is  found  in  many  treatments  of  the  myth: 
Themis  warned  Prometheus  that  in  aiding  man  with 
fire  and  the  arts  he  only  increased  man's  woes.  It  is  the 
old  pessimistic  thought  that  civilization  is  a  curse  — 
that  the  only  growth  of  the  soul  is  growth  in  the  capacity 
for  pain,  for  disillusion,  for  despair.  Shelley  introduces 
it  in  quite  the  Promethean  spirit  —  as  a  thing,  which  if  it 
be,  is  to  be  borne.  What  were  the  two  characteristic 
failures  of  human  hope  in  Shelley's  eyes  ?  The  capital 
instances  ?  They  were  the  failure  of  Christianity  to  bring 
the  millennium,  and  the  failure  of  the  French  Revolu- 
tion in  the  same  end  —  and  not  only  their  failure  to 
bring  the  millennium,  but,  on  the  contrary,  their  in- 
fluence in  still  further  confounding  the  state  of  mankind 
and  flooding  the  nations  with  new  miseries.  The  Furies 
show  these  two  failures  to  Prometheus  in  vision.  The 
passage  is  somewhat  involved  as  the  vision  is  successive- 

[72] 


THE  TITAN  MYTH 
ly  disclosed  through  the  words  of  the  chorus  of  Furies, 
of  the  attendant  sisters  lone  and  Panthea,  and  of  Pro- 
metheus, but  I  will  endeavour  to  make  it  plain : 

"  Chorus 
"  TJie  pale  stars  of  the  morn 
Shine  on  a  misery,  dire  to  be  borne. 
Dost  thou  faint,  mighty  Titan?  We  laugh  thee  to  scorn. 
Dost  thou  boast  the  clear  knowledge  thou  waken  dst  for  man? 
Then  was  kindled  within  him  a  thirst  which  oidran 
Those  perishing  waters;  a  thirst  of  fierce  fever, 
Hope,  love,  doubt,  desire,  which  consume  him  for  ever 
One  came  forth  of  gentle  worth 
Smiling  on  the  sanguine  earth; 
His  words  outlived  him,  like  swift  poison 
Withering  up  trxdh,  peace,  and  pity. 
Look!  where  round  the  wide  horizon 
Many  a  million-peopled  city 
Vomits  smoke  in  the  bright  air. 
Mark  that  otdcry  of  despair! 
'T  is  his  mild  and  gentle  ghost 
Wailing  for  the  faith  he  kindled: 
Look  again,  the  flames  almost 
To  a  gloxv-worms  lamp  have  dwindled: 
The  survivors  round  the  embers 
Gather  in  dread. 

Joy,  joy,  joy! 
Past  ages  crowd  on  thee,  but  each  one  remembers y 
And  the  future  is  dark,  and  the  present  is  spread 
Like  a  pillow  of  thorns  for  thy  slumberless  head. 

[73] 


THE  TORCH 
"  Semichorus  I 

"  Drops  of  bloody  agony  flow 
From  his  white  and  quivering  brow. 
Grant  a  little  respite  now: 
See  a  disenchanted  nation 
Springs  like  day  from  desolation; 
To  Truth  its  state  is  dedicate. 
And  Freedom  leads  it  forth,  her  mate; 
A  legioned  band  of  linked  brothers 
Whom  Love  calls  children  — 

"  Semichorus   II 

"'Tis  another's: 
See  how  kindred  murder  kin  : 
'T  is  the  vintage  time  for  death  and  sin: 
Blood,  like  new  wine,  bubbles  within: 
Till  Despair  smothers 
The  struggling  world,  which  slaves  and  tyrants  vnn. 

[all,  the  Furies  vanish,  except  one] 
loNE.  Hark,  sister!  what  a  low  yet  dreadful  groan 
Quite  unsuppressed  is  tearing  up  the  heart 
Of  the  good  Titan,  as  storms  tear  the  deep, 
And  beasts  hear  the  sea  moan  in  inland  caves. 
Darest  thou  observe  how  the  fiends  torture  him? 
Panthea.  Alas!  I  looked  forth  tvnce,  but  will  no  more. 
loNE.  What  didst  thou  see  ? 
Panthea.  A  woful  sigM:  a  youth 
With  patient  looks  nailed  to  a  crucifix. 
Ione.  What  next? 

[74] 


THE  TITAN  MYTH 

Panthea.  The  heaven  around,  the  earth  below 

Was  peopled  with  thick  shapes  of  human  death. 

All  horrible,  and  wrought  by  human  hands, 

And  some  appeared  the  work  of  human  hearts. 

For  men  were  slowly  killed  by  frowns  and  smiles: 

And  other  sights  too  foul  to  speak  and  live 

Were  wandering  by.  Let  us  not  tempt  worse  fear 

By  looking  forth:  those  groans  are  grief  enough. 

Fury.  Behold  an  emblem:  those  who  do  endure 

Deep  wrongs  for  man,  and  scorn,  and  chains,  but  heap 

Thousandfold  torment  on  themselves  and  him. 

Prometheus.  Remit  the  anguish  of  that  lighted  stare; 

Close  those  wan  lips;  let  that  thorn-wounded  brow 

Stream  not  with  blood;  it  mingles  with  thy  tearsl 

Fix,  fix  those  tortured  orbs  in  peace  and  death. 

So  thy  sick  throes  shake  not  that  crucifix. 

So  those  pale  fingers  play  not  with  thy  gore. 

O,  horrible!  Thy  name  I  will  not  speak. 

It  hath  become  a  curse.  I  see,  I  see 

The  wise,  the  mild,  the  lofty,  and  the  just. 

Whom  thy  slaves  hate  for  being  like  to  thee. 

Some  hunted  by  fold  lies  from  their  heart's  hcmte. 

An  early-chosen,  late-lamented  home; 

As  hooded  ounces  cling  to  the  driven  hind; 

Some  linked  to  corpses  in  unwholesome  cells: 

Some  —  Hear  I  not  the  multitude  laugh  loud  ?  — 

Impaled  in  lingering  fire:  and  mighty  realms 

Float  by  my  feet,  like  sea-uprooted  isles. 

Whose  sons  are  kneaded  down  in  common  blood 

By  the  red  light  of  their  own  burning  home.s: 

[75] 


THE  TORCH 

Fury.  Blood  thou  canst  see,  and  fire;  and  canst  hear  groans; 

Worse  things,  unheard,  unseen,  remain  behind. 

Prometheus.  Worse? 

Fury.  In  each  human  heart  terror  survives 

The  ruin  it  has  gorged:  the  loftiest  fear 

All  tJiat  they  would  disdain  to  think  were  true: 

Hypocrisy  and  custom,  make  their  minds 

The  fanes  of  many  a  worship,  now  outworn. 

They  dare  not  devise  good  for  mans  estate. 

And  yet  they  knotv  not  that  they  do  not  dare. 

The  good  want  poioer,  hut  to  weep  barren  tears. 

The  powerfid  goodness  want:  worse  need  for  them. 

The  wise  want  love;  and  those  who  love  want  tcisdom; 

And  all  best  things  are  thus  confused  to  ill. 

Many  are  strong  and  rich,  and  would  be  just. 

But  live  among  their  suffering  fellow-men 

As  if  none  felt:  they  know  not  what  they  do. 

Prometheus.   Thy  words  are  like  a  cloud  of  vnngM  snakes; 

And  yet  I  pity  those  they  torture  not. 

Fury.  Thou  pitiest  them?  I  speak  no  more!  [Vanishes] 

Prometheus.  Ah  woe! 

Ah  woe!  Alas!  pain,  pain  ever,  for  ever! 

I  close  my  tearless  eyes,  hut  see  more  clear 

Thy  works  within  my  woe-illumbd  mind. 

Thou  subtle  tyrant!  Peace  is  in  the  grave. 

The  grave  hides  all  things  beautiful  and  good: 

I  am  a  God  and  cannot  find  it  tJiere, 

Nor  would  I  seek  it:  for,  though  dread  revenge. 

This  is  defeat,  fierce  king,  not  victory. 

The  sights  with  which  thou  torturest  gird  my  soul 

[76] 


THE  TITAN  MYTH 

With  new  endurance,  till  the  hour  arrives 
When  they  shall  be  no  types  of  things  which  are. 
Panthea.  Alas!  what  sawest  thou? 
Prometheus.  There  are  two  woes: 
To  speak,  and  to  behold;  thou  spare  me  one. 
Names  are  there,  Nature's  sacred  watchwords,  they 
Were  borne  aloft  in  bright  emblazonry; 
The  nations  thronged  around,  and  cried  aloud. 
As  tvith  one  voice,  Truth,  liberty,  and  love! 
Suddenly  fierce  confusion  fell  from  heaven 
Among  them:  there  was  strife,  deceit,  and  fear. 
Tyrants  rushed  in,  and  did  divide  the  spoil. 
This  was  the  shadow  of  the  truth  I  saw." 

The  victory  of  Prometheus  is  in  his  declaration  that 
he  pities  those  who  are  not  tortured  by  such  scenes.  He 
had  already  disclosed  this  pitiful  heart  in  his  first 
speech;  and,  desiring  to  hear  the  curse  he  had  originally 
launched  on  Zeus,  and  being  gratified  in  this  wish  by  the 
Earth,  he  had  revoked  it: 

"  It  doth  repent  me:  words  are  quick  and  vain; 
Grief  for  awhile  is  blind,  and  so  was  mine. 
I  wish  no  living  thing  to  suffer  pain." 

Thus  he  had  forgiven  his  great  enemy. 

As  I  read  the  play,  this  forgiveness  of  Zeus  by  Pro- 
metheus makes  the  predestined  hour  of  the  downfall  of 
Zeus.  The  chariot  bears  aloft  the  new  principle  of  su- 

[77] 


THE  TORCH 

preme  being,  a  higher  and  younger-born  principle, 
which  exceeds  that  which  Zeus  embodied,  just  as  Zeus 
had  in  his  birth  been  a  higher  principle  than  the  old 
reign  contained;  and  Zeus  is  flung  headlong,  like  Luci- 
fer, into  the  abyss  of  past  things.  Thus  Shelley,  as  is  the 
universal  way  of  genius,  had  created  a  great  work  by 
fusing  in  it  two  divergent  products  of  the  human  spirit 
—  the  Hellenic  idea  of  a  higher  power  superseding  the 
lower,  and  the  Christian  idea  that  this  power  was  one  of 
non-resistance,  of  forgiveness,  of  love.  The  reign  of  love 
now  begins  in  the  poem:  Prometheus  is  released  and 
wedded  with  Asia,  who  stands  for  the  spirit  of  nature, 
in  which  marriage  is  typified  the  union  of  the  human 
soul  with  nature,  the  harmony  of  man  and  nature,  and 
he  shares  in  the  millennium  which  is  thus  estabhshed  on 
earth. 

At  the  end,  you  cbserve,the  Titan  Myth  drops  away; 
it  does  not  appear  in  the  last  acts ;  for  in  it  there  was  no 
such  completion  of  the  Promethean  faith  as  Shelley  de- 
scribes. 

And  here  I  might  end  the  discussion  of  Shelley's 
handling  of  the  myth ;  but  I  cannot  refrain  from  direct- 
ing your  attention  to  the  marvellous  power  of  the  myth 
which  could  so  blend  the  Greek  and  Christian  genius, 
and  contain  the  passion  of  the  French  Revolution 
issuing  in  the  highest  and  most  extreme  forms  of  Chris- 

[78] 


THE  TITAN  MYTH 
tian  ethics  —  in  non-resistance,  that  is,  and  in  the  for- 
giveness of  enemies.  I  say  nothing  of  the  practical  wis- 
dom of  this  doctrine;  what  is  it,  but  the  old  verses  ? 

"  But  I  say  unto  you,  that  ye  resist  not  evil ;  hut  whosoever 
shall  smite  thee  on  thy  right  cheeky  turn  to  him  the  other 
also : " 

but  I  desire  that  you  should  identify  this  wisdom  with 
its  m  jment  of  utterance.  The  French  Revolution  — 
the  Revolution  of  the  Terror  and  the  block,  of  the 
burnt  chateaux  and  the  Napoleonic  wars,  was  over  and 
done  with;  Shelley,  in  whom  its  spirit  burnt  as  the 
pure  flame,  had  rejected  its  methods,  while  holding  to 
its  ideals.  He  had  lifted  it  from  a  political  to  a  moral 
cause:  he  had  abandoned  the  sword  as  its  Evangel, 
and  he  put  persuasion  in  the  place  of  force,  and  love 
in  the  place  of  hate,  and  the  genius  of  victory  which  he 
invoked  was  the  conversion  of  society  by  the  stricken 
cheek  and  the  lost  cloak.  The  idea  of  humanity  was  the 
fountain  of  his  thought  and  I  he  armour  of  his  argument. 
I  will  not  refrain  from  saying  that  the  idea  of  a  suffer- 
ing humanity,  which  finds  the  path  of  progress  in  invin- 
cible opposition  to  the  ruling  gods  of  the  hour  in  the  faith 
in  greater  divinities  to  come,  is  properly  crowned  and 
consecrated  by  tliis  doctrine,  that  patient  forgiveness  of 
the  wrong  is  the  essence  of  victory  over  it,  and  the  sure 

[79] 


THE  TORCH 

road  to  its  downfall.  But  the  significance  of  such  a  myth 
is  not  to  be  exhausted  by  one  poet,  or  by  one  treatment ; 
and  in  my  next  lecture  I  shall  take  up  the  work  of  Keats, 
Goethe,  Herder,  and  Schlegel,  in  interpreting  hfe,  as 
they  conceived  it,  by  the  same  formula. 

I  have  left  myself  a  moment  to  bring  forward  two 
considerations  which  may  prove  suggestive.  The  first  is 
the  analogy  between  Hebrew  and  Greek  myths  in  the 
point  that  whereas  in  Eden  the  eating  of  the  fruit  of  the 
knowledge  of  good  and  evil,  whereby  man  became  as 
God,  was  the  occasion  of  man's  ills,  so  in  the  myth  of 
Greece  the  sharing  of  men  in  the  divine  fire  was  the  cause 
of  the  sorrows  of  civihzation.  The  second  is  that  in  the 
drama  of  the  Book  of  Job  there  is  a  strong  likeness  to  the 
situation  in  Prometheus,  in  the  point  that  there  is  no 
action,  but  only  a  passive  suffering  in  the  principal 
character;  and  that  in  this  suffering  there  is  a  dissent 
from  the  wisdom  of  Divine  ways ;  that  Job  holds  to  liis 
integrity  and  faith  in  his  own  righteousness  in  the  face  of 
all  disaster  and  all  argument,  in  quite  the  Promethean 
spirit,  obdurately ;  and  that  he  has  the  Promethean  faith 
in  the  issue.  The  situation  lies  in  the  verse : 

"  Though  he  slay  me,  yet  will  I  trust  in  him;  but  I  will 
maintain  my  ways  before  him." 

The  dignity  of  the  human  soul  is  dramatically  up- 
held at  the  great  climax  of  Job's  final  assertion  of 

[80] 


THE  TITAN  MYTH 
his  righteousness;  and  the  situation  is  solved  only 
by  the  voice  from  the  whirlwind  declaring  that  as 
nature  is  a  mystery,  much  more  must  human  life  find 
mystery  as  an  element  of  its  being.  But  in  this  great 
drama  —  one  of  the  marvellous  works  of  human  genius 
—  though  there  is  the  presence  of  unjust  sujBFering,  of 
human  integrity,  and  of  a  final  victory  of  the  right  — 
there  is  no  such  clear  presentation  of  the  idea  and  its 
operation,  as  is  found  in  the  Promethean  legend  —  the 
idea  formulated  in  this  myth  by  the  race  out  of  its 
knowledge  of  its  own  hfe,  not  as  a  dramatic  incident 
such  as  Job's,  but  as  a  pervading  and  constant  law  — 
the  idea  that  the  progress  of  man  hes  in  an  immortal 
suffering,  an  invincible  endurance  of  the  injustice  of 
the  present  world,  in  anticipation  of  the  absolute  justice 
known  only  to  the  prophetic  heart  within.  This  idea  is  a 
natural  product  of  man's  reflection  on  his  history,  a 
natural  interpretation  of  his  experience ;  and  he  finds  it 
imaginatively  embodied  in  Prometheus  more  ade- 
quately and  humanly  than  elsewhere.  It  has  entered  into 
thousands  of  lives  in  this  last  century  of  the  Revolution, 
with  both  illumination  and  courage;  sharing  in  this  idea, 
and  the  Ufe  which  is  led  in  obedience  to  it,  the  humblest 
of  men  shares  in  the  sublimity  of  the  great  Titan. 


[811 


The  Torch 

IV 


THE  TITAN  MYTH 

n 


The  importance  of  history  in  literature  can  hardly  be 
emphasized  too  much.  I  have  not  hesitated  to  speak  of 
mythology  and  chivalry,  and  even  of  the  Scriptures,  as 
transformations  of  history,  and  of  imaginative  literature 
as  the  spiritual  after-hfe  both  of  historical  events  and  con- 
ditions in  the  narrow  sense,  and  of  general  human  ex- 
perience in  the  broad  sense.  I  have  directed  attention 
also  to  the  influence  of  history  in  a  more  direct  way,  in 
the  literature  of  the  last  century  —  to  its  inspirational 
power  there;  out  of  it  came,  in  particular,  the  pictur- 
esqueness  of  the  historical  novel;  and,  inasmuch  as  the 
romantic  spirit  of  the  century  explored  all  lands  and 
times  for  new  material,  and  eagerly  absorbed  all  that 
travel  or  research  brought  forward  new  to  the  European 
mind,  it  naturally  happened  that  the  conception  of  his- 
torical humanity  became  one  of  rich  variety ;  the  formula 
— "  many  men,  many  minds  " —  received  unending  illus- 

[85] 


THE  TORCH 
tration,  and  it  might  be  thought  that  the  result  would 
have  been  to  impress  on  the  race  a  sense  of  hopeless  di- 
versity in  its  members  rather  than  of  unbroken  unity. 
But  history  had  this  inspirational  power,  not  only  in  Ut- 
erature,  but  in  philosophy;  the  mind  of  man  was  stimu- 
lated to  find  in  all  this  new  mass  of  different  detail  a 
single  principle  that  would  explain  and  reconcile  the  ap- 
parent confusion  —  to  frame,  that  is,  a  philosophy  of 
history.  Herder,  the  German  writer,  was  one  of  the  most 
influential  of  the  great  men  who  attacked  this  problem ; 
he  gave  his  life  to  it.  At  the  dawn  of  a  new  age,  you 
know,  there  is  often  a  singular  phenomenon:  men  of 
genius  arise,  with  a  poetical  cast  of  mind,  and  they  are 
prophetic  of  the  new  day  because  they  show  forth  some 
single  idea  or  mood  of  it  though  they  do  not  grasp  the 
whole;  they  catch  like  morning  clouds,  some  the  red, 
some  the  gold,  some  the  purple  ray,  but  none  of  them 
gives  that  one  white  light  which  will  prevail  when  the  day 
is  fully  come.  An  outburst  of  poetry —  the  prevalence  of  a 
poetical  view  of  things  —  is  the  sign  of  an  advance  along 
the  whole  Une.  Herder  was  a  man  of  this  kind ;  and  it  is 
easy  now  to  say  that  his  method  was  imperfectly  scien- 
tific, and  that  his  imagination  and  desire  led  him  astray. 
Nevertheless  he  had  one  of  those  minds  which,  if  it  does 
not  build  a  system  squared  of  solid  timber,  flings  seeds 
on  every  wind  like  a  living  tree.  His  intellect  was  capa- 

[8G] 


THE  TITAN  MYTH 
cious,  and  in  the  attempt  he  made  to  include  all  things  in 
his  philosophizing  he  seems  an  anticipation  of  Herbert 
Spencer;  in  his  theorizing,  too,  students  find  innumer- 
able thoughts  —  that  are  half -guesses  —  which  are  al- 
most the  words  of  Darwin.  He  was,  thus,  you  see,  in  the 
true  path  of  advance;  he  caught  the  first  gleams  of  the 
new  hour  of  time.  He  was  interested,  over  and  above  all 
else,  in  humanity  and  its  destiny  as  disclosed  in  history. 
He  saw  in  history  the  working  of  a  law  of  beneficence 
and  justice,  which  though  it  might  not  seem  such  when 
viewed  in  its  means,  always  and  unfailingly  is  such  when 
viewed  in  its  end;  thus  from  the  concourse  and  struggle 
of  forces  in  civilization  there  is  always  issuing  the  slow 
triumph  of  reason.  This  was  what  Herder  conceived  as 
the  law  of  progress ;  and  is  the  view  taken  in  his  leading 
prose  works,  the  "Ideas  on  the  History  of  Mankind" 
and  the  "  Letters  for  the  Furtherance  of  Humanity," 
which  are  still  great  and  fruitful  books.  At  the  very  end 
of  a  life  spent  thus  in  meditation  on  the  career  of  man  in 
civilization,  Herder  set  forth  his  faith  in  the  principle  of 
progress  in  a  series  of  dramatic  scenes  built  out  of  the 
myth  of  Prometheus.  He  identified  the  fire  which  was 
the  Titan's  characteristic  gift  to  mortals,  as  civilization, 
and  saw  in  it  the  two-fold  symbol  —  first,  of  the  arts 
themselves,  secondly,  of  that  divine  soul  which  restlessly 
excites  and  spurs  on  all  the  powers  of  man. 

[87] 


THE  TORCH 
I  will  sketch  very  briefly  the  story  as  Herder  tells  it. 
Prometheus  has  been  long  chained  to  the  rock,  and  (as 
in  Shelley's  poem)  time  has  ripened  and  softened  his 
heart,  partly  because  he  knows  that  liis  work  is  prosper- 
ing among  men.  In  the  first  scene  he  hears  a  distant  song 
of  victory,  and  voices  announce  to  him  that  reason  fruc- 
tifies the  earth.  In  later  scenes,  first  the  daughters  of  the 
Ocean  and  old  Oceanus  himself  come  complaining  that 
mankind  disturbs  the  sea  with  ships,  changes  the  course 
of  the  waters  by  dams  and  canals,  and  brings  the  ends  of 
the  earth  together  with  commerce;  but  Prometheus  re- 
plies, prophesying :  — 

"T/ie  sea  which  girds  the  earth  shall  he  the  mediator  and 
peace-maker  of  the  nations." 

Then  the  Dryads,  daughters  of  the  earth  come,  with  a 
similar  tale;  but  Prometheus  tells  them  that  in  the  end 
man  will  make  a  garden  of  the  earth;  and  other  mytho- 
logical characters  enter,  each  with  its  tale,  Ceres,  the 
goddess  of  harvest,  who  works  with  man  —  and  Bac- 
chus, the  giver  of  the  vine:  at  last  Hercules  and  Theseus 
release  the  Titan,  all  go  before  Themis,  the  goddess  of 
justice  who  judges  the  cause  between  Prometheus  and 
the  gods,  and  gives  the  decision  for  Prometheus.  Pallas 
then  leads  to  Prometheus  Agatia,  the  pure  spirit  of  hu- 
manity, and  the  drama  ends.  You  see  the  work  is  little 

[88] 


THE  TITAN  MYTH 

more  than  a  series  of  picturesque  classical  tableaux,  in 
which  the  victory  of  man  through  reason  is  set  forth 
with  a  maintenance  of  self-sacrifice,  perseverance,  pa- 
tience, social  labour  and  love  as  the  essential  elements  of 
the  moral  ideal. 

A  few  years  before,  Schlegel  had  produced  a  Prome- 
theus in  the  form  of  a  poem,  in  the  same  realm  of  his- 
tory but  with  much  less  scenic  elaboration.  In  it  he 
describes  the  Golden  Age  before  the  Titan  War,  the  deso- 
late state  of  man  after  Zeus  came  to  the  throne,  and  how 
Prometheus  made  of  clay  a  new  race,  and  animated  the 
clay  with  the  heavenly  fire.  Themis  reproves  him  for  this 
act,  and  foretells  the  sorrows  of  this  Promethean  man  — 
this  being  of  divine  desire  chained  to  the  earth  and  tyr- 
annized over  by  the  thought  of  the  past  and  of  the  future 
alike.  But  Prometheus  believes,  he  says,  that  good  will 
not  die,  that  the  toil  of  one  generation  will  help  the  next, 
that  human  will  reduces  life  to  order  and  human  action 
subdues  nature;  and  that  out  of  the  midst  of  oppos- 
ing principles  civilization  grows  to  more  and  more. 
The  law  of  progress  is  stated  with  sure  optimism: 
though  there  may  be  ages  of  terror  and  apparent  de- 
generation, yet  the  immortal  principle  of  good  in  the 
race  is  such  that  it  passes  invulnerable  through  all 
history,  and  accomplishes  the  work  of  civilization.  The 
poem  is  no  more  than  a  reply  to  the  sad  prophecy  of 

[89] 


THE  TORCH 

Themis,  and  perhaps  incidentally  to  such  reaction- 
aries as  saw  in  the  Reign  of  Terror  and  the  Revolution 
generally  the  denial  of  progress  and  of  the  social 
ideal. 

But  in  the  sphere  of  history,  one  of  the  latest  rework- 
ings  of  the  myth,  the  Prometheus  of  Quinet,  the  French 
poet,  contains  the  most  interesting  variation.  He  con- 
ceived firmly  the  unity  of  history;  and  in  obedience  to  this 
conception  he  endeavoured  to  unite  the  Greek  myth  with 
Christianity,  not  ethically  as  Shelley  did,  but  historically. 
"  If  Prometheus  "  —  he  says  in  his  preface  —  "  is  the 
eternal  prophet,  as  his  name  indicates,  each  new  age  of 
humanity  can  put  new  oracles  in  the  mouth  of  the  Titan. 
Perhaps  there  is  no  character  so  well  fitted  to  express  the 
feelings  —  the  premature  and  half  melancholy  desires 

—  in  which  our  age  is  enchained."  In  this  spirit  he  wrote 
a  drama  in  three  parts:  the  first  depicts  the  creation  of 
man  by  Prometheus,  the  gift  of  fire  —  that  is,  the  soul 

—  and  the  beginning  of  life  in  sorrow.  The  second  part 
depicts  the  suffering  of  Prometheus  on  Caucasus,  in 
which  the  foreknowledge  of  the  fall  of  Zeus  becomes  a 
prophecy  of  Christ's  coming.  The  third  act  depicts  the 
advent  of  Christianity.  The  Archangels,  Raphael  and 
Michael  descend  on  Caucasus,  and  release  Prometheus, 
who  rises  transfigured;  the  gods  of  Olympus  prostrate 
themselves  before  him  and  the  angels,  and  pray  in  vain 

[90] 


THE  TITAJ^  MYTH 
for  life.  Then  Prometheus  has  a  singular  thought  which 
to  me  is  the  most  dramatic  in  the  play:  as  he  listens  to 
the  death-song  of  the  gods,  his  mind  is  clouded  with  a 
doubt :  —  will  not  the  new  divinity  also  pass  away  ?  — 
and  does  he  not  already  see  a  new  Caucasus  before  him 
in  the  distant  time  ?  —  will  he  not  be  bound  again  ?  — 
The  angels  comfort  him,  and  he  ascends  to  heaven ;  but 
as  he  disappears  in  that  hierarchy  of  celestial  peace  and 
love,  he  still  wears  the  shadow  of  thought  —  for  he  re- 
members that  on  earth  men  still  suffer.  This  attempt  at  a 
true  synthesis  of  the  Greek  and  Christian  imagination  — 
in  behalf  of  the  unity  of  history  —  is  a  most  interesting 
illustration  of  the  spirit  of  the  century;  which  was  on  the 
whole  a  century  of  peace-making  between  the  great  his- 
toric elements  of  spiritual  civilization,  a  drawing  to- 
gether and  harmonizing  of  religions,  philosophies  and 
half-developed  and  fragmentary  doctrines,  by  virtue  of 
the  identical  principle  they  contain;  or  as  Herder  said, 
in  consequence  of  that  symmetry  of  human  reason 
which  makes  all  nobler  minds  tend  to  think  the  same 
thoughts. 

Interesting  as  the  historical  point  of  view  is,  it  is  plain 
that  the  myth  loses  something  of  its  poetical  quality,  be- 
comes pure  allegory,  becomes  almost  mechanical ;  it  be- 
comes, in  fact,  what  is  called  poetical  machinery,  a  hard 
and  fast  means  of  figurative  expression.  The  characters 

[91] 


THE  TORCH 
in  Herder  and  Schlegel  move  like  marionettes,  and  you 
hear  the  voice  of  the  author  apart  from  his  work.  Let  us 
turn  to  a  mind  in  which  the  myth  really  was  alive  again, 
with  creative  as  well  as  expressive  power  —  the  mind  of 
Keats.  In  his  "  Hyperion,"  the  tale  is  of  the  Titans  im- 
mediately after  their  overthrow;  they  have  been  de- 
throned from  power,  Saturn  is  an  exile  hiding  in  the 
deep  glens,  but  their  ruin  is  still  incomplete;  Hyperion 
still  is  lord  in  the  sun,  and  the  others  are  at  liberty  to 
gather  for  a  great  council.  In  order  to  display  the  idea  of 
Keats,  let  me  approach  it  indirectly.  The  point  of  view 
which  he  takes  has  much  affinity  with  science  —  more, 
that  is,  than  with  either  history  or  ethics.  Modem  the- 
ories of  evolution  have  accustomed  our  minds  to  the 
conception  of  an  original  state  of  the  universe,  vast, 
homogeneous,  undiversified,  simple;  out  of  this  —  to 
adopt  the  nebular  theory  —  slowly  great  masses  con- 
glomerated, gathered  into  sun  and  planets;  and  out  of 
these  arose  finally  living  things  on  a  smaller  scale  but  of 
higher  perfection  of  being.  Now  if  you  will  think  of 
man's  progressive  conceptions  of  the  divinity  as  some- 
thing similar  to  this,  as  parallel  to  it,  you  will  have 
Keats's  idea.  In  the  beginning  were  the  vast,  vague,  un- 
defined, half-unconscious  beings,  like  Uranus,  the  heav- 
ens, and  Gaia,  the  earth,  and  Chronos,  time;  to  them 
succeeded    the    more    conscious    and    half-humanized 

[92] 


THE  TITAN  MYTH 
brood  of  the  Titans,  like  the  sun  and  planets,  as  it  were; 
last  came  the  gods  of  Olympus,  in  the  perfection  of  full 
humanity,  and  on  the  physical  scale  of  man  in  form, 
feature  and  spirit.  The  change  from  the  Titanic  to  the 
Olympian  rule,  was  like  the  change  from  one  geological 
age  of  vast  forms  of  brute  and  vegetable  life  to  another 
of  smaller  but  nobler  species.  The  higher  principle  dis- 
places the  lower,  according  to  that  Greek  idea  of  pro- 
gress which  I  have  described;  and  this  successive  dis- 
placement of  the  lower  by  the  higher  is  the  law  of  devel- 
opment in  the  Universe. 

In  Keats's  poem,  Oceanus,  speaking  to  the  Titans 
in  council  as  the  wisest  of  them  all,  sets  forth  the  matter 
plainly,  and  I  should  like  you  to  notice  how  the  concep- 
tion of  a  progressive  order  in  nature  (not  as  hitherto  in 
civilization  merely)  and  the  conception  of  the  necessity 
of  accepting  truth,  bear  the  mark  of  the  scientific  spirit. 
Oceanus  thus  speaks :  — 

We  fall  by  course  of  Nature's  law,  not  force 
Of  thunder,  or  of  Jove.  Great  Saturn,  tJum 
Hast  sifted  well  the  atom-universe; 
But  for  this  reason,  that  thou  art  the  King, 
And  only  blind  from  sheer  supremacy. 
One  avenue  was  shaded  from  thine  eyes. 
Through  which  I  wander  d  to  eternal  truth. 
And  first,  as  thou  wast  not  tlie  first  of  powers, 

[93] 


THE  TORCH 

So  art  thou  not  the  last;  it  cannot  be. 

Thou  art  not  the  beginning  nor  the  end. 

From  chaos  and  parental  darkness  came 

Light,  the  first  fruits  of  that  intestine  broil. 

That  sullen  ferment,  which  for  wondrous  ends 

Was  ripening  in  itself.  The  ripe  hour  came, 

And  with  it  light,  and  light  engendering 

Upon  its  own  producer,  forthwith  touched 

The  whole  enormous  matter  into  life. 

Upon  that  very  hour,  our  parentage. 

The  Heavens  and  the  Earth,  were  manifest: 

Then  thou  first-born,  and  we  the  giant-race. 

Found  ourselves  ruling  new  and  beaideous  realms. 

Now  comes  the  pain  of  truth,  to  whom  H  is  pain; 

O  folly!  for  to  bear  all  naked  trxdhs. 

And  to  envisage  circumstance,  all  calm. 

That  is  the  top  of  sovereignty.  Mark  well! 

As  Heaven  and  Earth  are  fairer,  fairer  far 

Than  Chaos  and  blank  Darkness,  though  once  chiefs; 

And  as  we  show  beyond  tlud  Heaven  and  Earth 

In  form  and  shape  compact  and  beaidiful. 

In  will,  in  action  free,  companionship. 

And  thousand  other  signs  of  purer  life; 

So  on  our  heels  a  fresh  perfection  treads, 

A  power  more  strong  in  beauty,  born  of  us 

And  fated  to  excel  us,  as  we  pass 

In  glory  that  old  Darkness:  nor  are  we 

Thereby  more  conquered,  than  by  us  the  rule 

Of  shapeless  Chaos.  Say,  doth  the  dull  soil 

Quarrel  with  the  proud  forests  it  hath  fed 

[94] 


THE  TITAN  MYTH 

And  feedeth  still,  more  comely  than  itself? 
Can  it  deny  the  chiefdom  of  green  groves? 
Or  shall  the  tree  be  envious  of  the  dove 
Because  it  cooeth,  and  hath  snowy  wings 
To  wander  wherewithal  and  find  its  joys? 
We  are  such  forest-trees,  and  our  fair  boughs 
Have  bared  forth,  not  pale  solitary  doves, 
Bid  eagles  golden- feathered,  who  do  tower 
Above  us  in  their  beauty,  and  must  reign 
In  right  thereof;  for  't  is  the  eternal  law 
That  first  in  beauty  should  be  first  in  might: 
Yea,  by  that  law,  another  race  may  drive 
Our  conquerors  to  mourn  as  we  do  now. 
Have  ye  beheld  the  young  God  of  the  Seas, 
My  dispossessor?  Have  ye  seen  his  face? 
Have  ye  beheld  his  chariot,  foam'd  along 
By  noble  wingM  creatures  he  Imth  made? 
I  saw  him  on  the  calmed  waters  scud, 
Wiih  such  a  glow  of  beauty  in  his  eyes. 
That  it  enforced  me  to  bid  sad  farewell 
To  all  my  empire;  farewell  sad  I  took. 
And  hither  came,  to  see  how  dolorous  fate 
Had  wrought  upon  ye;  and  hoiv  I  might  best 
Give  consolation  in  this  woe  extreme. 
Receive  the  truth,  and  let  it  be  your  balm." 

It  appears,  then,  that  the  new  principle  of  being,  in 
whose  advent  lay  the  ruin  of  the  old  world,  is  beauty. 

"'T  is  the  eternal  law 
That  first  in  beauty  should  be  first  in  might." 

[95] 


THE  TORCH 

This  is,  as  you  know,  Keats's  distinctive  mark  —  the 
perception  and  adoration  of  beauty.  What  love  was  to 
Shelley,  that  beauty  was  to  Keats  —  the  open  door  to 
divinity ;  he  saw  life  as  a  form  of  beauty.  And  he  means 
what  he  says  —  not  that  beauty  has  strength  as  an  added 
quahty,  but  that  beauty  is  strength,  and  reigns  in  its  own 
right.  This  rise  of  the  Olympians  was  beauty's  moment 
of  birth  in  the  minds  of  men;  this  birth  was  a  revelation, 
like  a  new  rehgion,  and  it  is  presented  as  such  by  Keats 
in  a  two-fold  way.  First  it  is  a  revelation  to  the  Titans. 
You  have  seen  how  Oceanus  on  beholding  the  new  god 
of  the  sea,  gave  up  the  rule  over  it.  So  Clymene,  who 
describes  herself  — 

"O  Father,  I  am  here  the  simplest  voice"  — 

tells  her  experience: 

"  /  stood  upon  a  shore,  a  pleasant  shore. 
Where  a  sweet  clime  was  breathed  from  a  land 
Of  fragrance,  quietjiess,  and  trees,  and  flowers. 
Full  of  calm  joy  it  was,  as  I  of  grief; 
Too  full  of  joy  and  soft  delicious  warmth; 
So  that  I  felt  a  movement  in  my  heart 
To  chide,  and  to  reproach  that  solitude 
With  songs  of  misery,  music  of  our  woes; 
And  sat  me  down,  and  took  a  mouthed  shell 
And  murmur' d  into  it,  and  made  melody  — 
O  melody  no  more!  for  while  I  sang, 
[96] 


THE  TITAN  MYTH 

And  with  poor  skill  let  pass  into  the  breeze 

The  dull  shell's  echo,  from  a  bowery  strand 

Just  opposite,  an  island  of  the  sea. 

There  came  enchantment  with  the  shifting  wind. 

Thai  did  both  drown  and  keep  alive  my  ears. 

I  threw  my  shell  away  upon  the  sand, 

And  a  wave  ftlVd  it,  as  my  sense  was  fllVd 

With  that  new  blissful  golden  melody. 

A  living  death  was  in  each  gush  of  sounds. 

Each  family  of  rapturous  hurried  notes. 

That  fell,  one  after  one,  yet  all  at  once. 

Like  pearl  beads  dropping  sudden  from  their  string: 

And  then  another,  then  another  strain. 

Each  like  a  dove  leaving  its  olive  perch, 

With  music  winged  instead  of  silent  plumes 

To  hover  round  my  head,  and  make  me  sick 

Of  joy  and  grief  at  once.  Grief  overcame. 

And  I  was  stopping  up  my  frantic  ears. 

When,  past  all  hindrance  of  my  trembling  hands, 

A  voice  came  sweeter,  sweeter  than  all  tune. 

And  still  it  cried,  'Apollo!  young  Apollo! 

The  morning -bright  Apollo!  young  Apollo!' 

I  fled,  it  followed  me,  and  cried,  'Apollo!'  " 

Beauty  is  also  a  revelation  to  the  gods  themselves  in 
their  own  bosoms  where  it  has  sprung  into  hfe.  The  pas- 
sage in  which  Apollo's  awakening  is  described  —  full 
of  a  poet's  personal  touches  of  his  own  experience  in 
coming  into  possession  of  himself  —  is  one  of  the  most 
impassioned  in  all  Keats's  writing: 

[97] 


THE  TORCH 

'  Together  had  he  left  his  mother  fair 
And  his  twin-sister  sleeping  in  their  bower. 
And  in  the  morning  twilight  wandered  forth 
Beside  the  osiers  of  a  rivulet, 
Fidl  ankle-deep  in  lilies  of  the  vale. 
The  nightingale  had  ceased,  and  a  few  stars 
Were  lingering  in  the  heavens,  while  the  thrush 
Began  calm-throated.  Throughout  all  the  isle 
There  was  no  covert,  no  retired  cave 
Unhaunted  by  the  murmurous  noise  of  waves. 
Though  scarcely  heard  in  many  a  green  recess. 
He  listen  d,  and  he  wept,  and  his  bright  tears 
Went  trickling  down  the  golden  bow  he  held. 
Thus  with  half-shut  siiffusM  eyes  he  stood. 
While  from  beneath  some  cumbrous  boughs  hard  by 
With  solemn  step  an  awful  Goddess  came. 
And  there  was  purport  in  her  looks  for  him. 
Which  he  with  eager  guess  began  to  read 
Perplex'd,  the  while  melodiously  he  said: 
'How  cam'st  thou  over  the  unfooted  sea? 
Or  hath  that  antique  mien  and  robhd  form 
Moved  in  these  vales  invisible  till  now? 
Sure  I  have  heard  those  vestments  siveeping  o'er 
The  fallen  leaves,  when  I  have  sat  alone 
In  cool  mid- for  est.  Surely  I  have  traced 
The  rustle  of  those  ample  skirts  about 
These  grassy  solitudes,  and  seen  the  flowers 
Lift  up  their  heads,  and  still  the  whisper  passed. 
Goddess!  I  have  beheld  those  eyes  before, 
And  their  eternal  calm,  and  all  thai  face 

[08] 


THE  TITAN  MYTH 

Or  I  have  dream' d.'  —  *  Yes,'  said  the  supreme  shape, 

*  Thou  hast  dreamed  of  me;  and  awaking  up 

Didst  find  a  lyre  all  golden  by  thy  side. 

Whose  strings  touch'd  by  thy  fingers,  all  the  vast 

Unwearied  ear  of  the  whole  universe 

Listen  d  in  pain  and  pleasure  at  the  birth 

Of  such  new  tuneful  wonder.  Is  't  not  strange 

That  thou  shouldst  weep,  so  gifted?  Tell  me,  youth. 

What  sorrow  thou  canst  feel;  for  I  am  sad 

When  thou  dost  shed  a  tear:  explain  thy  griefs 

To  one  who  in  this  lonely  isle  hath  been 

The  watcher  of  thy  sleep  and  hours  of  life. 

From  the  young  day  when  first  thy  infant  hand 

Plucked  witless  the  weak  flowers,  till  thine  arm 

Could  bend  that  bow  heroic  to  all  times. 

Show  thy  heart's  secret  to  an  ancient  Power 

Who  hath  forsaken  old  and  sacred  thrones 

For  prophecies  of  thee,  and  for  tJie  sake 

Of  loveliness  new-born.'  —  Apollo  then. 

With  sudden  scrutiny  and  gloomless  eyes. 

Thus  answered,  while  his  white  melodious  throat 

ThrobVd  with  the  syllables:  —  ''Mnemosyne! 

Thy  name  is  on  my  tongue,  I  know  not  how; 

Why  should  I  tell  thee  what  thou  so  well  seest? 

Why  should  I  strive  to  show  what  from  thy  lips 

Would  come  no  mystery?  For  me,  dark,  dark. 

And  painful  vile  oblivion  seals  my  eyes: 

I  strive  to  search  wherefore  I  am  so  sad. 

Until  a  melancholy  numbs  my  limbs; 

And  then  upon  the  gra^s  I  sit,  and  moan, 

[99] 


THE  TORCH 

Like  one  who  once  had  wings.  —  O  why  should  I 

Feel  cursed  and  thwarted,  when  the  liegeless  air 

Yields  to  my  step  aspirant?  why  should  I 

Spurn  the  green  turf  as  hateful  to  my  feet? 

Goddess  benign,  point  forth  some  unknown  thing: 

Are  there  not  other  regions  than  this  isle? 

What  are  the  stars?  There  is  tfie  sun,  the  sunt 

And  the  most  patient  brilliance  of  the  moon! 

And  stars  by  thousands!  Point  me  out  the  way 

To  any  one  particular  beauteous  star. 

And  I  will  flit  into  it  with  my  lyre. 

And  make  its  silvery  splendour  pant  with  bliss 

I  have  heard  the  cloudy  thunder:  Where  is  power? 

Whose  hand,  whose  essence,  what  divinity 

Makes  this  alarum  in  the  elements. 

While  I  here  idle  listen  on  the  shores 

In  fearless  yet  in  aching  ignorance? 

O  tell  me,  lonely  Goddess,  by  thy  harp. 

That  waileth  every  morn  and  eventide. 

Tell  me  why  thu^  I  rave,  about  these  groves! 

Mute  thou  remainest.  —  Mute!  yet  I  can  read 

A  wondrous  lesson  in  thy  silent  face: 

Knowledge  enormous  makes  a  God  of  me. 

Names,  deeds,  grey  legends,  dire  events,  rebellions. 

Majesties,  sovran  voices,  agonies. 

Creations  and  destroyings,  all  at  once 

Pour  into  the  wide  hollows  of  my  brain. 

And  deify  me,  as  if  some  blithe  wine 

Or  bright  elixir  peerless  I  had  drunk. 

And  so  become  immortal.'  —  Thus  the  God, 

[100] 


THE  TITAN  MYTH 

While  his  enkindled  eyes,  with  level  glance 

Beneath  his  white  soft  temples,  steadfast  kept 

Trembling  with  light  upon  Mnemosyne. 

Soon  wild  commotions  shook  him,  and  made  flush 

All  the  immortal  fairness  of  his  limbs: 

Most  like  the  struggle  at  the  gate  of  death; 

Or  liker  still  to  one  who  should  take  leave 

Of  pale  immortal  death,  and  with  a  pang 

As  hot  as  death  's  is  chill,  with  fierce  convulse 

Die  into  life:  so  young  Apollo  anguished: 

His  very  hair,  his  golden  tresses  famed 

Kept  undulation  round  his  eager  neck. 

During  tlie  pain  Mnemosyne  upheld 

Her  arms  as  one  who  prophesied.  —  At  length 

Apollo  shriek' d;  —  and  lo!  from  all  his  limbs 

Celestial.     .     .     ." 

The  birth-cry  of  Apollo  was  the  death-cry  of  Keats: 
there  the  golden  pen  fell  from  his  hands,  and  the  poem 
—  a  fragment  —  ends. 

There  is  one  detail  in  Keats's  work,  which  though  it  is 
subsidiary,  deserves  mention  because  it  completes  the 
reality  of  the  Titan  Myth  in  an  important  way.  In  all  the 
other  writers,  whom  I  have  named,  you  do  not  get  any 
idea  of  the  Titans  physically,  you  do  not  see  them  as  Ti- 
tans. In  Shelley,  and  the  rest,  Prometheus  is  essentially  a 
man;  he  has  human  proportion;  in  Keats  Prometheus 
does  not  appear  at  all.  But  Keats  has  realized  the  Ti- 
tanic figures  to  the  imagination  as  distinct  and  noble 
[101] 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
ftAJNTA  BARBARA  COLLEGE  UBRARt 


THE  TORCH 
forms ;  they  have  the  massi veness  of  limb  and  immobil- 
ity of  feature  that  we  associate  with  Egyptian  art,  with 
the  Sphinxes  and  the  Memnons;  yet  each  is  character- 
ized differently;  Saturn,  Oceanus,  Enceladus,  Thea, 
Mnemosyne  are  individualized,  and  especially  Hype- 
rion is  set  forth,  in  ways  of  grandeur.  The  subject  would 
require  more  illustration  than  I  can  now  give  it ;  but  let 
me  cite  the  very  remarkable  figure  which  is  found  in  the 
second  version  of  "  Hyperion,"  a  version  that  is  as  full  of 
Dante  as  the  first  one  is  of  Milton.  The  figure  is  that  of 
Moneta,  the  solitary  and  ageless  priestess  of  the  temple 
of  the  Titans,  "  sole  goddess  of  its  desolation,"  who  gives 
the  poet  the  vision  of  the  past. 

"  And  yet  I  had  a  terror  of  her  robes, 
And  chiefly  of  the  veils  that  from  her  brow 
Hung  pale,  and  curtain  d  her  in  mysteries. 
That  made  my  heart  too  small  to  hold  its  blood. 
This  saw  that  Goddess,  and  with  sacred  hand 
Parted  the  veils.  Then  saw  I  a  wan  face. 
Not  pind  by  human  sorrows,  but  bright-blanched 
By  an  immortal  sickness  which  kills  not; 
It  works  a  constant  change,  which  happy  death 
Can  put  no  end  to;  deathwards  progressing 
To  no  death  was  that  visage;  it  had  past 
The  lily  and  the  snow;  and  beyond  these 
I  m,v^t  not  think  now,  though  I  saw  that  face. 
But  for  her  eyes  I  should  have  fled  away; 
[102] 


THE  TITAN  MYTH 

They  held  me  hack  with  a  benignant  light, 

Soft,  mitigated  by  divinest  lids 

Half-clos'd,  and  visionless  entire  they  seem'd 

Of  all  external  things;  they  saw  me  not. 

But  in  blank  splendour  beam'd,  like  the  mild  moon. 

Who  comforts  those  she  sees  not,  who  knows  not 

What  eyes  are  upward  cast." 

A  similar  imaginative  power  to  that  shown  here  per- 
vades Keats 's  conceptions  of  the  Titans,  and  distin- 
guishes his  work  from  all  others  as  a  creation  in  the  vis- 
ible world  of  the  imagination  such  as  is  not  elsewhere  to 
be  found.  Here  only  is  the  Titan  world  made  nobly  real. 
I  fear  to  weary  you  with  this  long  catalogue  of  the  va- 
rious modern  forms  of  the  Titan  Myth,  but  it  is  neces- 
sary to  develop  the  theme.  I  must  say  at  least  a  word 
about  Goethe's  "  Prometheus."  It  is  only  a  brief  frag- 
ment of  a  drama,  and  belongs  to  his  youth.  He  was  but 
twenty -four  when  he  experimented  with  it.  In  the  scenes 
which  we  possess,  Prometheus  is  the  maker  of  the  clay 
images  to  which  he  gives  life  by  the  aid  of  Pallas  —  that 
is,  really,  by  his  own  intelligence.  He  launches  them  as 
men  in  the  career  of  civilization  by  declaring  to  them  the 
principle  of  property;  he  tells  one  to  build  a  house,  and 
to  the  question  whether  it  will  be  for  the  man  himself  or 
for  everybody,  Prometheus  answers  it  shall  be  the  man's 
own  private  possession  and  dwelling;  he  declares  also 
[103] 


THE  TORCH 
the  principle  of  retaliatory  justice,  saying  on  the  occa- 
sion of  the  first  theft,  that  he  whose  hand  is  against  every 
one,  every  one's  hand  shall  be  against  him;  and  he  an- 
nounces the  fact  and  meaning  of  the  first  death.  The 
drama  does  not  proceed  further.  Its  significance  lies  in 
two  points ;  in  the  first  place  it  is  easy  to  see  in  Prome- 
theus's  attitude  toward  his  clay  images  and  his  lan- 
guage about  them  a  reflection  of  the  young  poet's  own 
state  of  mind  toward  the  mental  beings  whom  he  creates 
—  a  reflection,  that  is,  of  the  pride  and  glory  of  genius  in 
imaginary  creation.  Secondly,  and  more  importantly, 
the  drama  exhibits  the  intense  desire  of  the  young  Goe- 
the for  complete  individual  independence.  In  the  answer 
Prometheus  makes  to  the  messenger  of  Zeus,  who  re- 
monstrates with  him,  the  central  point  is  that  Prome- 
theus feels  he  is  a  god  hke  Zeus,  and  wants  freedom  to 
do  his  will  in  his  own  realm  as  Zeus  does  in  Olympus. 
Let  Zeus  keep  his  own,  and  let  me  keep  my  own,  he 
says ;  he  would  rather  his  clay  images  should  never  live 
than  be  subjects  of  Zeus,  for  being  still  unborn,  they  are 
still  free;  Uberty  is  the  true  good,  and  men,  made  by  him, 
shall  be  embodiments  of  his  own  independent  spirit.  In 
all  this  is  the  prophecy  of  Goethe's  own  life.  To  me  Goe- 
the is  the  type  of  the  man  who  wants  to  be  let  alone ;  and 
he  accomplished  his  desire  in  a  supremely  selfish  tran- 
quillity, in  which  he  used  life  to  develop  himself, 
[104] 


THE  TITAN  MYTH 
sacrificed  all  things  to  himself,  was  at  once  the  model 
and  the  condemnation  of  self-culture  so  pursued.  In  his 
young  Prometheus  there  is  this  impatient  cry  for  indi- 
vidual hberty,  as  a  basis  of  life;  and  I  discern  little  else 
significant  in  it.  I  must  also  spare  a  word  for  Victor 
Hugo's  "Titan."  The  poem  is  in  the  "Legend  of  the 
Ages."  This  Titan  is  not  Prometheus,  or  any  other  in- 
dividual Titan,  but  is  all  of  them  in  one,  the  giant,  con- 
ceived as  one.  He  is,  of  course,  mankind  —  earth-born 
man,  conceived  as  in  scientific  history,  burrowing  his 
way  out  of  the  planet  itself  —  a  massive  mediseval  crea- 
ture, gross  and  violent,  tearing  his  path  through  cave 
and  grotto,  till  at  last  he  emerges  and  sees  the  stars.  This 
giant  is  clearly  a  symbol  of  man  rising  from  his  crude 
earthUness  of  nature  and  barbaric  ages  up  to  the  sight 
and  knowledge  of  the  heavenly  world.  It  is  a  type  of  pro- 
gress, as  science  and  history  jointly  conceive  the  evolu- 
tion of  humanity. 

I  have  sufficiently  illustrated  how  the  Titan  Myth  in 
its  variety  has  been  employed  to  embody  and  express  the 
idea  of  a  progressive  humanity  in  many  aspects  as  it  has 
appeared  to  different  poets.  The  idea  of  progress  is  in 
our  civilization  a  continuing  and  universal  idea;  and 
Prometheus  is  a  continuing  and  universal  image  of  its 
nature  —  the  race-image  of  a  race-idea.  The  Prome- 
thean situation  is  inherent  in  the  law  of  human  progress, 
[105] 


THE  TORCH 
however  viewed,  whether  historically  or  scientifically  or 
ethically,  or  in  any  other  way.  Emerson  says 

"  The  fiend  that  man  harries. 
Is  Love  of  the  Best." 

The  dream  of  this  Best,  and  the  will  to  bring  it  down  to 
earth  —  the  struggle  with  the  temporary  ruling  worse 
that  is  in  the  world  and  must  be  dethroned  —  the  proud 
and  resolute  suffering  of  all  that  such  a  present  world 
can  inflict  —  the  faith  in  the  final  victory,  are  the  Pro- 
methean characteristics;  but  the  human  spirit,  in  the 
nature  of  the  case,  must  forever  be  in  bonds ;  its  succes- 
sive hberations  are  partial  only,  and  in  the  disclosure  of 
a  forever  fairer  dream  in  the  future,  lies  also  the  dis- 
closure of  new  bonds,  for  the  present  is  always  a  state  of 
chains  in  view  of  the  to-morrow;  and  for  man  there  is 
always  to-morrow.  The  great  words  that  seem  the  keys 
of  progress,  such  as  reason,  love,  beauty,  are  only  sym- 
bols of  an  infinite  series  in  Ufe  —  a  series  that  never  ends. 
Such  is  the  abstract  statement  that  progress  involves  the 
idea  of  humanity  as  a  Promethean  sufferer.  But  the  race, 
which  requires  picturesque  and  vivid  images  of  its  high- 
est faith,  hope  and  thought,  comes  to  its  poets,  like  the 
human  child,  and  says  ever  and  ever  —  "  Tell  me  a  story : 
tell  me  a  story  about  myself."  And  the  poet  tells  the  race 
a  new  story  about  itself  —  like  the  mother  of  Marius 
[106] 


THE  TITAN  MYTH 
when  she  told  him  of  "the  white  bird  which  he  must 
bear  in  his  bosom  across  the  crowded  market-place  — 
his  soul."  Each  poet  tells  this  new  story  to  the  child 
about  itself  —  a  story  it  did  not  know  before,  and  the 
child  believes  the  story  and  increases  knowledge  and  Ufe 
with  it.  The  question  the  race  asks,  in  this  Myth,  is 
"  what  is  most  divine  in  me  ?  "  "  What  is  the  god  in  me  ?  " 
—  and  Shelley  answers,  it  is  all-enduring  and  all-for- 
giving love  toward  all;  and  Herder  answers  that  it  is  rea- 
son, Keats  that  it  is  beauty,  Goethe  that  it  is  Uberty,  and 
Hugo  that  it  is  immense  triumphant  toil;  and  each  in 
giving  his  answer  tells  the  story  of  the  old  gods  and  the 
younger  gods,  and  the  wise  Titan  who  knew  yet  other 
gods  that  should  come.  And  the  race  listens  to  these  tales 
because  it  hears  in  them  its  own  voice  speaking.  Men  of 
genius  are  men,  like  other  men;  but  their  genius,  if  I 
may  use  an  obvious  comparison,  is  like  the  reflector  in 
front  of  the  Ught-house  flame  —  in  all  directions  but  one 
it  is  a  common  flame,  but  in  that  one  direction  along 
which  the  reflector  magnifies,  glorifies  and  speeds  its 
radiance,  it  is  the  shining  of  a  great  light.  Look  at  men 
of  genius,  as  you  find  them  in  biography,  and  they  seem 
ordinary  persons  of  daily  affairs;  but  if  you  can  catch 
sight  of  genius  through  that  side  which  is  turned  out  to 
the  infinite  as  to  a  great  ocean,  you  will  see,  I  will  not 
say  the  man  himself,  but  the  use  God  makes  of  the  man. 
[107] 


THE  TORCH 

That  use  is  to  reveal  ourselves  to  ourselves,  to  show  what 
human  nature  is  and  can  do,  to  unlock  our  minds,  our 
hearts,  all  our  energies,  for  use.  We  admire  and  love 
such  men  because  they  are  more  ourselves  than  we  are, 
the  undeveloped,  often  unknown  selves  that  in  us  are 
but  partially  born.  "  What  is  most  divine  in  me  }  "  is  the 
question  the  race  puts;  and  perhaps  it  is  true  (though 
the  statement  may  be  startling),  that  as  soon  as  man  dis- 
covers a  god  in  himself,  all  external  gods  fall  from  their 
thrones  —  and  this  is  the  meaning  of  the  myth.  But 
again,  what  is  this  but  the  old  verse  — 

"  The  kingdom  of  heaven  is  within  you?" 

That  realized,  the  old  gods  may  go  their  ways.  It  is 
reaUzed,  perhaps,  for  one  of  its  modes,  in  tliis  way: 
that  as  the  being  of  beauty  is  entire  and  perfect  in 
the  grass  that  flourishes  for  a  summer,  or  in  the  rose 
of  dawn  that  fades  even  while  it  blossoms,  so  the  power 
of  moral  ideas  enters,  entire  and  perfect,  into  our 
being,  and,  as  I  said,  the  humblest  of  men  suffering  for 
man's  good  as  he  conceives  it  shares  in  the  moral  sub- 
limity of  Prometheus.  What  is  thus  within  man  —  the 
thing  that  is  most  divine  —  is  certainly  the  medium  by 
which  man  approaches  the  divinity,  and  through  which 
he  beholds  it,  in  any  living  way.  It  belongs  to  Puritan- 
ism, as  a  mood  of  mind,  to  be  impatient  of  any  external 
[108] 


THE  TITAN  MYTH 
thing  between  the  soul  and  the  divinity ;  it  will  have  the 
least  of  any  such  material  element  in  its  spiritual  sight 
and  communion ;  it  sees  god  by  an  inner  vision.  Mediums 
of  some  sort  there  must  be  between  human  nature  and 
its  idea  of  the  divine ;  and  it  seems  to  me  that  our  inner 
vision  by  which  the  Puritan  spirit  reaches  outward  and 
upward  is  the  vision  of  imagination  transfiguring  history 
to  saints  and  martyrs  in  their  holy  living  and  holy  dying, 
transfiguring  all  human  experience  to  the  idealities  of 
poetry.  Mankind  seeing  itself  more  perfect  in  St.  Fran- 
cis, in  Philip  Sidney,  in  all  men  of  spiritual  genius, 
makes  them  a  part  of  this  inner  vision  —  and,  rank  over 
rank,  above  them  the  perfection  of  Arthur  and  Parsifal, 
and  still  more  high  the  perfection  of  reason,  beauty,  and 
love  in  their  element.  In  this  hierarchy  of  human  daring, 
dreaming,  desiring  is  the  only  beatific  vision  that  human 
eyes  ever  immediately  beheld  —  the  vision  of  what  is 
most  divine  in  man.  What  I  maintain  is  that,  humanly 
speaking,  in  the  search  for  God  one  path  by  which  the 
race  moves  on  is  through  this  inner  vision  of  ideal  per- 
fections in  its  own  nature  and  its  own  experience,  which 
it  has  fixed  and  illuminated  in  these  imaginative  figures, 
these  race-images  of  race-ideas. 


[109  J 


The  Torch 
V 


SPENSER 


The  general  principle  which  I  have  endeavoured  to  set 
forth  in  the  first  four  lectures  is  that  mankind  in  the 
process  of  civilization  stores  up  race-power,  in  one  or  an- 
other form,  so  that  it  is  a  continually  growing  fund ;  and 
that  literature,  pre-eminently,  is  such  a  store  of  spiritual 
race-power,  derived  originally  from  the  historical  life  or 
from  the  general  experience  of  men,  and  transformed  by 
imagination  so  that  all  which  is  not  necessary  falls  away 
from  it  and  what  is  left  is  truth  in  its  simplest,  most  vivid 
and  vital  form.  Thus  I  instanced  mythology,  chivalry, 
and  the  Scriptures  as  three  such  sifted  deposits  of  the 
past;  and  I  illustrated  the  use  poetry  makes  of  such  race- 
images  and  race-ideas  by  the  example  of  the  myth  of  the 
Titans.  In  the  remaining  four  lectures  I  desire  to  ap- 
proach the  same  general  principle  of  the  storing  of  race- 
power  from  the  starting-point  of  the  individual  author 
—  to  set  forth  Spenser,  Milton,  Wordsworth  and  Shel- 
[113] 


THE  TORCH 
ley,  not  in  their  personality  but  as  race-exponents,  and 
to  show  that  their  essential  greatness  and  value  are  due 
to  the  degree  in  which  they  availed  themselves  of  the 
race-store.  You  may  remember  that  I  defined  education 
for  all  men  as  the  process  of  identifying  oneself  with  the 
race-mind,  entering  into  and  taking  possession  of  the 
race-store;  and  the  rule  is  the  same  for  men  of  genius  as 
for  other  men.  You  find,  consequently,  that  the  greatest 
poets  have  always  been  the  best  scholars  of  their  times 
—  not  in  the  encyclopaedic  sense  that  they  knew  every- 
thing, but  in  the  sense  that  they  possessed  the  living 
knowledge  of  their  age,  so  far  as  it  concerns  the  human 
soul  and  its  history.  They  have  always  possessed  what  is 
called  the  academic  mind  —  that  is,  they  had  a  strong 
grasp  on  literary  tradition  and  the  great  thoughts  of 
mankind,  and  the  great  forms  which  those  thoughts  had 
taken  on  in  the  historic  imagination.  Virgil  is  a  striking 
example  of  such  a  poet,  perfectly  cultivated  in  all  the  ar- 
tistic, philosophic,  literary  tradition  as  it  then  was: 
Dante  and  Chaucer  are  similar  instances;  and,  in  Eng- 
lish, Spenser,  Milton,  Gray,  Shelley  and  Tennyson  con- 
tinue the  line  of  those  poets  in  whom  scholarship  —  the 
academic  tradition  —  is  an  essential  element  in  their 
worth.  It  ought  not  to  be  necessary  to  bring  this  out  so 
clearly;  for  it  is  obvious  that  men  of  genius,  in  the  pro- 
cess of  absorbing  the  race-store,  by  the  very  fact  become 
[114] 


SPENSER 

scholarly  men,  men  of  intellectual  culture,  though  in 
consequence  of  their  genius  they  neglect  all  culture  ex- 
cept that  which  still  has  spiritual  life  in  it.  This  is  so  ele- 
mentary a  truth  in  literature  that  the  index  to  the  im- 
portance of  an  author  is  often  his  representative  power 
—  the  degree  to  which  he  sums  up  and  delivers  the  hu- 
man past.  How  large  a  tract  of  time,  what  extent  of 
knowledge,  what  range  of  historical  emotion  —  does  his 
mind  drain  ?  These  are  initial  questions.  And  in  literary 
history,  you  know,  there  are  here  and  there  minds,  so 
central  to  the  period,  such  meeting  points  of  different 
ages  and  cultures,  that  they  resemble  those  junctions  on 
a  railway  map  which  seem  to  absorb  all  geography  into 
their  own  black  dots.  The  greatest  poets  are  just  such 
centres  of  spiritual  history;  where  ancient  and  modem 
meet,  where  classicism  and  medisevalism,  Christianity 
and  paganism.  Renaissance  and  Reformation  and  Rev- 
olution meet  —  there  is  the  focus,  for  the  time  being,  of 
the  soul  of  man ;  and  it  is  at  that  point  that  genius  devel- 
opes  its  transcendent  power. 

Spenser  was  such  a  mind.  I  spoke  in  the  first  lecture 
of  that  law  of  progress  which  involves  the  passing  away 
of  a  civilization  at  the  moment  of  its  perfection  and  the 
death  of  that  breed  of  men  who  have  brought  it  to  its 
height.  Spenser  was  the  poet  of  a  dying  race  and  a  dying 
culture;  in  his  work  there  is  reflected  and  embodied  a 
[115] 


THE  TORCH 
climax  in  the  spiritual  life  of  humanity  to  which  imag- 
nation  gives  form,  beauty,  and  passion.  In  this  respect 
I  am  always  reminded  of  Virgil  when  I  read  him;  for 
Virgil  used,  like  Spenser,  the  romanticism  of  a  receding 
past  to  express  his  sense  of  human  life,  and  he  was  re- 
lated to  his  materials  in  much  the  same  way.  The  Myth 
of  Arthur  lay  behind  Spenser  as  the  Myth  of  Troy  lay 
behind  Virgil  in  the  mist  of  his  country's  origins;  the 
Italians  of  the  Renaissance,  Ariosto,  and  Tasso,  were  a 
school  for  Spenser  much  as  the  Alexandrian  poets  had 
been  for  Virgil ;  and  as  in  Virgil  mythology  and  Homeric 
heroism  and  the  legend  of  the  antique  Italian  land  be- 
fore Rome  blended  in  one,  and  became  the  last  flower- 
ing of  the  pre-Christian  world  in  what  is,  perhaps,  the 
greatest  of  all  world-poems,  the  "iEneid, "  so  in  Spenser 
chivalry,  medisevalism  and  the  new  birth  of  learning  in 
Europe  blended,  and  gave  us  a  world-poem  of  the 
Christian  soul,  in  which  mediaeval  spirituality  —  as  it 
seems  to  me  —  expired.  Spenser  resembled  Virgil,  too, 
in  his  moment;  he  was  endeavouring  to  create  for  Eng- 
land a  poem  such  as  Italy  possessed  in  Ariosto's  and 
Tasso's  epics,  to  introduce  into  his  country's  literature 
the  most  supreme  poetic  art  then  in  the  world,  just  as  Vir- 
gil was  attempting  to  instil  into  the  Roman  genius  the  im- 
aginative art  of  Greece.  He  resembled  Virgil  again  in  his 
poetic  education  inasmuch  as  he  formed  his  powers  and 
[116] 


SPENSER 
first  exercised  them  in  pastoral  verse,  in  the  "  Shephard's 
Kalendar"  as  Virgil  did  in  his  "Eclogues";  and  he  re- 
sembled Virgil  still  more  importantly  in  that  his  theme 
was  the  greatest  known  to  him  —  namely,  the  empire  of 
the  soul,  as  Virgil's  was  the  empire  of  Rome.  Spenser, 
then,  when  he  came  to  his  work  is  to  be  looked  on  as  a 
master  of  all  literary  learning,  a  pioneer  and  planter  of 
poetic  art  in  his  own  country,  and  a  poet  who  used  the 
world  of  the  receding  past  as  his  means  of  expressing 
what  was  most  real  to  him  in  human  life. 

The  work  by  which  he  is  remembered  is  "  The  Fserie 
Queene, "  and  in  it  all  that  I  have  said  meets  you  at  the 
threshold.  Perhaps  the  first,  and  certainly  the  abiding 
impression  the  poem  makes,  is  of  its  remoteness  from 
life.  Remoteness,  you  know,  is  said  to  be  a  necessary 
element  in  any  artistic  effect  —  such  as  you  feel  in  look- 
ing at  Greek  statues  or  Italian  Madonnas  or  French 
landscapes.  This  remoteness  of  the  artistic  world  the 
poem  has,  in  large  measure:  its  country  is  no  physical 
region  known  to  geography,  but  is  that  land  of  the  plain 
where  Knights  are  always  pricking,  of  forests  and  streams 
and  hills  that  have  no  element  of  composition,  and  es- 
pecially of  a  horizon  like  the  sea's,  usually  lonely,  but 
where  anything  may  appear  at  any  time :  it  is  a  land  like 
a  dream;  and  what  takes  place  there  at  any  moment  is 
pictorial,  and  can  be  painted.  But  the  quality  of  re- 
[117] 


THE  TORCH 
moteness,  so  noticeable  in  the  poem  and  to  which  I  re- 
fer, is  not  that  of  artistic  atmosphere  and  setting.  It 
arises  largely  from  the  remoteness  of  history  in  the  poem, 
felt  in  the  constant  presence  of  outworn  things,  of  by- 
gone characters,  ways  and  inci-dents;  and  the  im- 
pression of  intricacy  that  the  poem  also  makes  at  first, 
the  sense  of  confusion  in  it,  is  partly  due  to  this  same 
presence  of  the  unfamiliar  in  most  heterogeneous  variety. 
This  miscellaneousness  is  the  result  of  Spenser's  com- 
prehensive inclusion  in  the  poem  of  all  he  knew,  that  is, 
of  the  entire  literary  tradition  of  the  race  within  his 
ken.  Thus  you  find,  at  the  outset,  Aristotle's  scheme  of 
the  moral  virtues,  and  Plato's  doctrine  of  the  unity  of 
beauty  and  wisdom,  on  the  philosophical  side;  and  for 
imagery  out  of  the  classics,  here  are  Plato,  Proserpina, 
and  Night,  the  house  of  Morpheus,  the  bleeding  tree, 
the  cloud  that  envelopes  the  fallen  warrior  and  allows 
him  to  escape,  the  journey  in  Hades,  the  story  of  "  Hip- 
polytus, "  and  fauns,  satyrs  and  other  minor  mythologi- 
cal beings.  You  find,  also,  out  of  mediaeval  things,  the 
method  of  the  poem  which  is  the  characteristic  mediaevaJ 
method  of  allegory,  and  in  imagery  dragons,  giants, 
dwarfs,  the  hermit,  the  magician,  the  dungeon,  the  wood 
of  error,  the  dream  of  Arthur,  the  holy  wells,  the  Sara- 
cen Knights,  the  House  of  Pride,  the  House  of  Holi- 
ness, and  many  more;  and,  in  these  lists,  I  have  cited 
[118] 


SPENSER 
instances  only  from  the  first  of  the  six  books.  A  similar 
rich  variety  of  matter  is  to  be  found,  consisting  of  the 
characteristic  belongings  of  Renaissance  fable.  This 
multiplicity  of  imaginative  detail,  being  as  it  is  a  sum- 
mary of  all  the  poetical  knowledge  of  previous  time,  is 
perplexing  to  a  reader  unfamiliar  with  the  literature 
before  Spenser,  and  makes  the  poem  seem  really,  and  not 
merely  artistically  remote.  Here  appears  most  clearly  the 
fact  which  I  emphasize,  that  the"  Faerie  Queene"  depicts 
and  contains  a  receding  world,  a  dying  culture;  for  it  is 
to  be  borne  in  mind  that  to  Spenser  and  his  early  readers 
these  things  were  not  then  so  remote ;  medisevalism  was 
as  near  to  him  as  Puritanism  is  to  us,  and  the  thoughts^ 
methods,  aims,  language  and  imagery  of  the  Renaissance 
as  near  as  the  Revolution  is  to  us.  In  that  age,  too, 
chivalry  yet  lingered,  at  least  as  a  spectacle,  and  other 
materials  in  the  poem  that  now  seem  to  us  like  stage- 
machinery  were  part  and  parcel  of  real  life.  The  tourney 
was  still  a  game  of  splendid  pleasure  and  display  at  the 
Court  of  Elizabeth;  the  masque-procession,  so  constant 
in  one  or  another  form  in  the  poem,  was  a  fashion  of 
Christmas  mummery,  of  the  Court  Masque,  and  of 
city  processions ;  the  physical  aspect  and  furniture  of  the 
poem  were,  thus,  not  wholly  antiquated;  and  on  the 
side  of  character,  it  is  easy  to  read  between  the  lines  the 
presence  of  Spenser's  own  noble  friends  —  and  no  one 
[119] 


THE  TORCH 

in  that  age  was  richer  in  noble  friendship  —  the  pres- 
ence, I  mean,  of  the  just  Lord  Grey,  the  adventurous 
Raleigh,  and  the  high-spirited  Philip  Sidney.  The  ele- 
ment of  historical  remoteness  must,  therefore,  be 
thought  of  as  originally  much  less  strong  than  now,  and 
one  which  the  passage  of  time  has  imported  into  the 
poem  very  largely. 

We  are,  perhaps,  too  apt  to  think  that  our  own  age  is 
one  in  which  great  heterogeneousness  of  knowledge, 
of  thought  and  principle  and  faith,  is  a  distinctive  trait; 
but  we  are  not  the  first  to  find  our  race-inheritance  a 
confusion  of  riches,  and  a  tentative  electicism  the  best 
we  can  compass  in  getting  a  philosophy  of  our  own. 
Every  learned  and  open  mind,  in  the  times  of  the  flowing 
together  of  the  world's  ideas,  has  the  same  experience. 
Spenser,  being  a  receptive  mind  and  standing  at  the 
centre  of  the  ideas  of  the  world  then,  was  necessarily 
overwhelmed  with  the  variety  of  his  knowledge;  but  he 
faced  the  same  problem  that  Milton,  Gray,  Shelley,  and 
Tennyson  in  their  time  met;  the  problem  of  how  to  re- 
duce this  miscellaneousness  of  matter  to  some  order,  to 
reconcile  it  with  his  own  mind,  to  build  up  out  of  it  his 
own  world.  It  is  the  same  problem  that  confronts  each 
one  of  us,  in  education;  in  the  presence  of  this  race- 
inheritance,  so  vast,  so  apparently  contradictory  and 
diverse  —  how  to  take  possession  of  it,  to  make  it  ours 
[120] 


SPENSER 
vitally,  to  have  it  enter  into  and  take  possession  of  us. 
Spenser  is  an  admirable  example  of  this  situation,  for  in 
his  poem  the  opposition  between  the  race-mind  and  the 
individual  is  clearly  brought  out  in  the  point  that  he  con- 
verges all  this  imagery,  knowledge  and  method  in 
order  to  set  forth  the  individual's  hfe.  Spenser  states  his 
purpose  in  the  preface:  "The  general  end,"  he  says, 
"of  all  the  Book  is  to  fashion  a  gentleman,  or  noble 
person,  in  vertuous  and  gentle  discipline.  "  It  is  the  very 
problem  before  each  of  us  in  education:  "to  fashion  a 
gentleman.  "  Spenser's  plan,  in  portraying  how  this  is  to 
be  done,  is  a  very  simple  one.  By  a  gentleman  he 
means  a  man  of  Christian  virtue,  perfected  in  all  the 
graces  and  the  powers  of  human  nature.  The  educa- 
tion required  is  an  education  in  the  development  of 
the  virtues,  as  he  named  them  —  Holiness,  Temper- 
ance, Chastity,  Friendship,  Justice,  Courtesy;  he  illus- 
trates the  development  of  each  virtue,  one  in  each  Knight, 
and  sends  each  Knight  forth  on  an  adventure  in  the 
course  of  which  the  Knight  meets  and  overcomes  the 
characteristic  temptations  of  the  virtue  which  he  em- 
bodies. This  was  the  plan  of  the  poem,  which,  however, 
the  poet  found  it  easier  to  formulate  than  to  follow  with 
precision.  The  main  fact  stands  out,  however,  that  Spen- 
ser used  all  his  resources  of  knowledge  and  art,  miscel- 
laneous as  they  were,  for  the  single  purpose  of  showing 
[121] 


THE  TORCH 
how  the  soul  comes  to  moral  perfection  in  the  Christian 
world.  You  see  there  is  nothing  contemporary  or  remote 
or  by -gone  in  the  problem:  that  is  universal  and  un- 
changing; but  in  answering  it  Spenser  used  an  imagin- 
ative language  that  to  many  of  us  is  like  a  lost  tongue. 
Shall  we,  then,  let  the  allegory  go,  as  Lowell  advised, 
content  that  it  does  not  bite  us,  as  he  says .''  I  cannot 
bring  myself  to  second  that  advice.  Though  I  am  as 
fond  of  the  idols  of  poetry  for  their  own  sake  as  any  one, 
yet  I  have  room  for  idols  of  morality  and  philosophy 
also  —  let  us  have  as  many  idols  as  we  can  get,  is  my 
way:  and  to  leave  out  of  our  serious-minded  Spenser 
what  was  to  the  poet  himself  the  core  of  his  meaning  — 
its  spirituality  —  is  too  violent  a  measure,  and  bespeaks 
such  desperate  dullness  in  the  allegory  as  I  do  not  find 
in  it.  To  read  the  poem  for  the  beauty  of  its  surface,  and 
to  let  the  noble  substance  go,  is,  at  all  events,  not  the  way 
to  understand  it  as  a  focus  of  race-elements  and  a  store 
of  race-power,  as  a  poem  not  of  momentary  deUght,  but 
of  historical  phases  of  knowledge,  culture  and  aspira- 
tion, a  poem  of  the  thoughtful  human  spirit  brooding 
over  its  long  inheritance  of  beauty,  honour,  and  virtue. 

Of  course,  I  cannot  in  an  hour  convey  much  of  an 

idea  of  so  great  a  poem,  so  various  in  its  loveliness,  so 

profound  in  significance,  so  diversified  in  merely  literary 

interest.  I  shall  make  no  attempt  to  tell  its  picturesque 

[122] 


SPENSER 
and  wandering  story,  to  describe  its  characters,  or  to  ex- 
plain what  marvellous  lives  they  led  in  that  old  world  of 
romance.  But  I  shall  try  to  show,  in  general  terms,  cer- 
tain aspects  of  it  as  a  poem  that  presents  hfe  in  a  uni- 
versal, vital,  and  never-to-be-antiquated  way,  such  as  it 
seemed  to  one  of  the  most  noble-natured  of  English- 
men, in  a  great  age  of  human  effort,  thought  and  ac- 
complishment. 

Among  the  primary  images  under  which  life  has  been 
figured,  none  is  more  universal  and  constant  than  that 
into  which  the  idea  of  travel  enters.  To  all  men  at  all 
times  hfe  has  been  a  voyage,  a  pilgrimage,  a  quest. 
Spenser  conceived  of  it  as  the  quest,  the  peculiar  image 
of  chivalry,  but  not  as  the  quest  for  the  Grail  or  any 
other  shadowy  symbol  on  the  attainment  of  which  the 
quest  was  ended  in  a  mystic  solution.  The  quest  of  his 
Knights  is  for  self-mastery;  and  it  is  achieved  at  each 
forward  step  of  the  journey.  You  remember  that  in  the 
lecture  on  Prometheus  I  illustrated  the  way  in  which 
man  takes  a  certain  part  of  his  nature  —  the  evil  prin- 
ciple —  and  places  it  outside  of  himself,  calls  it  Mephis- 
topheles,  and  so  deals  with  it  artistically ;  in  Spenser,  the 
temptation  which  each  Knight  is  under  is  his  worser 
self,  as  we  say,  so  taken  and  placed  outside  as  his  enemy 
whom  he  overcomes;  thus,  Guy  on,  the  Knight  of  tem- 
perance, overcomes  the  various  forms  of  anger,  of 
[  123  ] 


THE  TORCH 
avarice,  and  of  voluptuousness,  which  are  merely,  in 
fact,  his  other  and  worser  selves;  in  each  victory  he 
gathers  strength  for  the  next  encounter,  and  so  ends 
perfecting  himself  in  that  virtue.  Life  —  that  is  to  say, 
the  quest  —  has  a  goal  in  self-mastery,  that  is  progres- 
sively reached  by  the  Knight  at  each  new  stage  of  his 
struggle.  The  atmosphere  of  Hfe  —  so  conceived  as  a 
spiritual  warfare  —  is  broadly  rendered;  it  is,  for  ex- 
ample, always  a  thing  of  danger,  and  this  element  is 
given  through  the  changing  incident,  the  deceits  prac- 
tised on  the  Knights,  the  troubles  they  fall  into,  often 
unwittingly,  and  undeservedly,  their  constant  need  to  be 
vigilant  and  to  receive  succor.  The  secret,  the  false,  the 
insidious,  are  as  often  present  as  is  the  warfare  of  the 
open  foe.  Again,  this  life  is  a  thing  of  mystery.  However 
clear  we  may  try  to  make  life,  however  positive  in  mind 
we  are  and  armed  against  illusions,  it  still  remains  true 
that  mystery  envelopes  life.  I  do  not  mean  the  mystery 
of  thought,  of  the  unknown,  but  the  mystery  of  life  itself. 
Spenser  conceives  this  mystery  as  the  action,  friendly  or 
inimical,  of  a  spiritual  world  round  about  man,  a  su- 
pernatural world ;  and  he  renders  it  by  means  of  enchant- 
ment. I  dare  say  that  to  most  readers  the  presence  of  en- 
chantment, both  evil  and  good,  is  a  hindrance  to  the  ap- 
preciation of  the  poem  and  impairs  its  reality  to  their 
minds.  Arthur,  you  know,  has  a  veiled  shield;  but  its 
[124] 


SPENSER 
bared  radiance  will  overthrow  of  itself  any  foe.  This 
seems  like  an  unfair  advantage,  and  takes  interest  from 
the  poem.  Such  enchanted  weapons  may  be  regarded  as 
symbolic  of  the  higher  nature  of  the  cause  in  which  they 
are  employed,  of  its  inward  power,  and  possibly  of  the 
true  powers  of  the  heroes,  their  spiritual  force,  and  it  may 
be  that  this  emphasis  on  the  spirituality  of  their  force  is 
the  true  reason  for  the  introduction  of  the  symbol;  for 
these  are  not  only  Knights  human,  but  Knights  Chris- 
tian and  clothed  with  a  might  which  is  not  of  this  world. 
Such  an  explanation,  though  plausible,  seems  mechani- 
cal; the  truth  which  it  contains  is  that  the  enchanted 
arms  do  not  denote  a  higher  degree  of  physical  strength, 
as  if  the  Knights  had  rifles  instead  of  spears,  but  a  dif- 
ference of  spiritual  power.  It  is,  however,  much  more 
clear  that  by  the  realm  of  enchantment  in  the  poem  is 
figured  the  interest  which  the  supernatural  world  takes 
in  man's  conflict  —  the  mediaeval  idea  that  God  and  his 
angels  are  on  one  side  and  the  devil  and  his  angels  are 
on  the  other;  and  the  presence  of  enchantment  in  the 
poem  is  a  means  of  expressing  this  belief.  The  reality  of 
divine  aid  against  devilish  machination  is  thus  sym- 
bolized; but  in  one  particular  this  aid  is  so  important  a 
matter  that  Spenser  introduces  it  in  a  more  essential  and, 
in  fact,  in  a  human  way.  To  Spenser's  mind,  no  man 
could  save  himself,  or  perfect  himself  in  virtue  even, 
[125] 


THE  TORCH 
without  Divine  Grace;  this  was  the  doctrine  he  held, 
and,  therefore,  he  made  Arthur  the  special  repre- 
sentative and  instrument  of  Grace,  and  at  each  point  of 
the  story  where  the  Knight  cannot  retrieve  him- 
self from  the  danger  into  which  he  had  fallen,  Arthur 
appears  with  his  glorious  arms  for  the  rescue.  The  pres- 
ence of  mystery  in  life,  too,  is  not  only  thus  felt  in  the 
atmosphere  of  enchantment  and  in  the  signal  acts  of  res- 
cue by  Arthur,  but  it  also  envelopes  the  cardinal  ab- 
stract ideas  of  the  poem  —  such  ideas,  I  mean,  as  wis- 
dom in  Una,  and  as  chastity  in  Britomart,  to  whose 
beauty  (which  is  of  course,  the  imaging  forth  of  the 
special  virtue  of  each)  is  ascribed  a  miraculous  power  of 
mastery,  as  in  Una's  case  over  the  Lion  and  the  foresters, 
and  in  Britomart's  case  over  Artegal. 

"  And  he  himself e  long  gazing  there  upon, 
At  last  fell  humbly  downe  upon  his  knee. 
And  of  his  wonder  made  religion, 

Weening  some  heavenly  goddesse  he  did  see." 

This  is  that  radiance  which  Plato  first  saw  in  the  counte- 
nance of  Truth,  such  that,  he  said,  were  Truth  to  come 
among  men  unveiled  in  her  own  form,  all  men  would 
worship  her.  So  Spenser,  learning  from  Plato,  presents 
the  essential  loveliness  of  all  virtue  as  having  inherent 
power  to  overcome  —  precisely,  you  will  remember,  as 
[126] 


SPENSER 

Keats  describes  the  principle  of  beauty  in  "  Hyperion  " 
as  inherently  victorious. 

The  idea  of  life  as  a  quest,  with  an  atmosphere  of 
danger  and  mystery,  and  presided  over  by  great  princi- 
ples such  as  wisdom,  grace,  chastity,  so  clad  in  loveliness 
to  the  moral  sense  that  they  seem  like  secondary  forms 
of  Divine  being  —  these  are  fundamental  conceptions 
in  the  poem,  its  roots,  so  to  speak,  and  they  belong  in 
the  ethical  sphere.  But  Spenser  was  the  most  poetically 
minded  of  all  English  poets;  he  not  only  knew  that 
however  true  and  exalted  his  ideas  of  life  might  be,  they 
must  come  forth  from  his  mind  as  images,  but  he  also  by 
nature  loved  truth  in  the  image  more  than  in  the  ab- 
stract; and  he  therefore  approached  truth  through  the 
imagination  rather  than  through  the  intellect.  That  is  to 
say,  he  was  a  poet,  first  and  foremost;  and  wove  his 
poem  of  sensuous  effects.  Sensibility  to  all  things  of  sense 
was  his  primary  endowment ;  he  was  a  lover  of  beauty, 
of  joy,  and  his  joy  in  beauty  reached  such  a  pitch  that  he 
excels  all  English  poets  in  a  certain  artistic  voluptu- 
ousness of  nature,  which  was  less  rich  in  Milton  and  less 
pure  in  Keats,  who  alone  are  to  be  compared  with  him, 
as  poets  of  sensuous  endowment.  It  is  seldom  that  the 
artistic  nature  appears  in  the  English  race;  it  belongs 
rather  to  the  southern  peoples,  and  especially  to  Italy; 
but  when  it  does  arise  in  the  English  genius,  and  blends 
[127] 


THE  TORCH 
happily  there  with  the  high  moral  spirit  which  is  a  more 
constant  English  trait  —  especially  when  it  blends  with 
the  Puritan  strain,  it  seems  as  if  the  young  Plato  had 
been  bom  again.  Both  Milton  and  Spenser  were  Puri- 
tans who  were  lovers  of  beauty;  and  Spenser  showed 
Milton  that  way  of  grace.  No  language  can  exaggerate 
the  extent  to  which  Spenser  was  permeated  with  this  sen- 
suousness  of  temperament,  and  he  created  the  body  of 
his  poem  out  of  it  —  the  colour,  the  picture,  the  incident, 
figures  and  places,  the  atmosphere,  the  cadence  and  the 
melody  of  it.  You  feel  this  bodily  delight  in  the  very  fall 
of  the  lines,  interlacing  and  sinuous,  with  Italian  soft- 
ness, smoothness,  and  slide.  You  feel  it  in  his  love  of 
gardens  and  streams;  in  his  love  of  pictured  walls,  and 
all  the  characteristic  adornments  of  Renaissance  art;  in 
his  grouping  of  human  figures  in  the  various  forms  of  the 
masque ;  in  his  descriptions  of  wealth  and  luxury,  of  the 
bower  of  bliss,  of  the  scenes  of  mythology;  in  every  part 
of  the  poem  the  flowing  of  this  fount  of  beauty  is  the  one 
unfailing  thing.  It  came  to  him  from  the  Italian  Renais- 
sance, of  course.  It  is  the  Renaissance  element  in  the 
poem;  and  with  it  all  the  other  elements  are  sufiFused. 
The  worship  of  beauty,  as  it  was  known  in  all  objects 
of  art,  and  in  all  poetry  which  had  formed  itself,  in  de- 
scription and  motive,  on  objects  of  art,  was  perhaps  its 
centre;  but,  in  Spenser,  it  exceeded  such  bounds,  and, 
[128] 


SPENSER 
though  taken  from  the  Renaissance,  it  was  given  a  new 
career  in  Puritanism.  For  the  singular  thing  about  this 
sensuous  sensibiUty  in  Spenser,  this  artistic  voluptu- 
ousness in  the  sight  and  presence  of  beauty,  is  that  it 
remained  pure  in  spirit.  In  Renaissance  poetry,  using 
the  same  chivalric  tradition  as  Spenser,  this  spirit  has 
ended  in  Ariosto's  "  Orlando  "  —  a  poem  of  cynicism,  as 
it  seems  to  me.  It  is  to  the  honour  of  the  moral  genius  of 
the  English  that  the  Renaissance  spirit  in  poetry,  in  their 
tongue,  issued  in  so  nobly  different  a  poem  as  "The 
Fserie  Queene.  "  This  was  because,  as  I  say,  the  Renais- 
sance worship  of  beauty  was  gi  ven  a  new  career  by  Spenser 
in  Puritanism,  Perhaps  I  can  best  illustrate  the  matter 
by  bringing  forward  what  was  one  of  Spenser's  noblest 
points.  He  raised  this  worship  of  beauty  to  the  highest 
point  of  ideality  by  having  recourse  to  the  tradition  of 
chivalry  in  its  worship  of  woman,  and  blended  the  two 
in  a  new  worship  of  womanhood.  I  think  it  will  be  agreed 
that,  although  Spenser's  romance  is  primarily  one  of 
the  adventures  of  men,  it  is  his  female  characters  that 
live  most  vividly  in  the  memory  of  the  reader.  These 
characters  are,  indeed,  very  simple  and  elementary  ones; 
they  are  not  elaborated  on  the  scale  to  wliich  the  novel 
has  accustomed  our  minds;  but  they  are  of  the  same 
kind,  it  seems  to  me,  as  Shakspere's  equally  simple 
types  of  womanhood  —  such  as  Cordelia,  Imogen,  Mi- 
[129] 


THE  TORCH 
randa  —  of  which  they  were  prophetic.  What  I  desire  to 
bring  out,  however,  is  not  their  simplicity,  but  the  fact 
that  they  enter  the  poem  to  ennoble  it,  to  raise  it  in 
spiritual  power,  and  to  strengthen  the  heroes  in  their 
struggles.  In  this  respect,  as  I  think,  Spenser  did  a  new 
thing.  In  the  epic,  generally,  woman  comes  on  the  scene 
only  to  impair  the  moral  quality  and  the  manly  actions  of 
the  hero :  such  was  Dido,  you  remember,  in  the  "^Eneid," 
and  Eve  in  "  Paradise  Lost, "  and  the  same  story,  with 
slight  qualifications  holds  of  other  epic  poems.  It  is  a 
high  distinction  that  in  Spenser  womanhood  is  presented, 
not  as  the  source  of  evil,  its  presence  and  its  temptation, 
but  as  the  inspiration  to  life  for  such  Knights  as  Artegal, 
the  Red-Cross  Knight,  and  others;  and,  furthermore, 
the  worship  of  beauty,  which  they  found  in  the  worship  of 
womanhood,  is  in  Spenser  hardly  to  be  distinguished 
from  the  worship  of  those  principles,  which  I  have  de- 
scribed as  secondary  forms  of  Divine  being  —  the  prin- 
ciples of  wisdom,  chastity  and  the  Hke.  I  find  in  these 
idealities  of  womanhood  the  highest  reach  of  the  poem, 
and  in  them  blend  harmoniously  the  chivalric,  artistic 
and  moral  elements  of  Spenser's  mind.  And  as  we  feel  in 
Spenser's  men  the  near  presence  of  such  friends  as  Lord 
Grey,  Raleigh  and  Sidney,  it  is  not  fanciful  to  feel  here 
the  neighbourhood  of  Elizabethan  women  —  such  as 
she  of  whom  Jonson  wrote  the  great  epitaph: 
[130] 


SPENSER 

"  Underneath  this  sable  hearse 
Lies  the  subject  of  all  verse; 
Sidney's  sister,  Pembroke's  mother. 
Death,  ere  thou  hast  slain  another 
Learned  and  fair  and  good  as  she. 
Time  shall  throw  a  dart  at  thee." 

With  this  supreme  presence  of  womanhood  in  "The 
Faerie  Queene"  goes  the  fact  that  warfare  as  such  is  a 
disappearing  element ;  it  is  less  prominent,  and  it  inter- 
ests less,  than  might  be  expected.  This  is  because,  just 
as  beauty  in  all  its  forms  is  spiritualized  in  the  poem,  so 
is  war;  the  war  here  described  is  the  inner  warfare  of  the 
soul  with  itself;  it  is  all  a  symbol  of  spiritual  struggle, 
and  necessarily  it  seems  less  real  as  a  thing  of  outward 
event.  The  poem  is  one  of  thought,  essentially;  its  ac- 
tion has  to  be  interpreted  in  terms  of  thought  before  it  is 
understood;  it  is,  in  truth,  a  contemplative  poem,  and 
its  mood  is  as  often  the  artistic  contemplation  of  beauty, 
as  the  ethical  contemplation  of  action.  These  are  the  two 
poles  on  which  the  poem  moves.  Yet  they  are  opposed 
only  in  the  analysis,  and  to  our  eyes ;  in  Spenser's  poem, 
and  in  his  heart  they  were  closely  united,  for  virtue 
was  to  him  the  utmost  of  beauty,  and  its  attainment 
was  by  the  worship  of  beauty;  so  near,  by  certain 
aptitudes  of  emotion  towards  the  supreme  good, 
did  he  come  to  Plato,  his  teacher,  and  is  therefore 
[131] 


THE  TORCH 
to   be  fitly  described,   in   this  regard,  as  the  disciple 
of  Plato. 

I  wonder  whether,  as  I  have  been  speaking,  the  poem 
and  its  author  grow  more  or  less  remote  to  you.  Spenser 
—  this  philosophical  Platonist,  tliis  Renaissance  artist, 
this  Puritan  moralist  —  does  he  seem  more  or  less  cred- 
ible ?  Was  it  not  a  strange  thing  that  he  should  think  that 
the  abstract  development  of  a  Christian  soul,  however 
picturesquely  presented,  was  an  important  theme  of 
poetry  ?  Yet  it  is  true,  that  the  most  purely  poetical  of 
English  poets,  and  one  of  the  most  cultivated  minds  of 
Europe  in  his  time,  had  this  idea;  and  in  EUzabeth's 
reign  —  that  is,  in  a  period  of  worldly  and  mascuUne  ac- 
tivity, of  immense  vigour,  in  the  very  dawn  and  sun- 
burst of  an  England  to  wliich  our  American  imperial 
dream  is  but  a  toy  of  fancy  —  in  that  Elizabethan,  that 
Shaksperian  age,  Spenser  chose  as  the  theme  of  highest 
moment  the  formation  of  a  Christian  character.  I  have 
spoken  of  the  artistic  remoteness  of  his  poem,  and  of  the 
remoteness  of  his  literary  tradition,  its  classical,  me- 
diaeval and  Renaissance  matter  and  method ;  but  there  is 
a  third  remoteness  by  which  it  seems  yet  more  distant  — 
the  remoteness  of  its  spirituality.  In  the  days  about  and 
before  Spenser  there  was  great  interest  in  the  question 
of  character  in  the  upper  classes;  what  were  the  quali- 
ties of  a  courtier  was  debated  over  and  over  in  every  civ- 
[132] 


SPENSER 
ilized  country,  and  the  books  written  about  it  are  still 
famous  books  and  worth  reading.  Spenser  took  this 
Renaissance  idea  —  what  is  the  pattern  of  manhood  ? 
—  and  —  just  as  in  the  case  of  the  worship  of  beauty  — 
gave  it  a  career  in  Puritanism.  The  question  became  — 
what  is  a  Christian  soul,  perfected  in  human  experience  ? 
What  are  its  aims,  its  means,  its  natural  history  ?  What 
is  its  ideal  life  in  this  world  of  beauty,  honour,  service  ? 
And  this  question  he  debated  in  the  six  books  of  his  half- 
completed  poem,  which  has  made  him  known  ever  since 
as  the  poet's  poet.  The  Knight  of  the"  Faerie  Queene"  is 
the  Renaissance  courtier  Christianized  —  that  is  all. 
Here  is  the  final  spiritualization  of  the  long  result  of 
chivalry  as  an  ideal  of  manly  life.  That  is  the  curious 
thing  —  that  the  result  is,  not  merely  moral,  but  spirit- 
ual. 

The  spiritual  life,  in  this  sense,  is  far  removed  from 
our  literature;  it  is  so,  because  it  is  far  removed  from  the 
general  thought  of  men.  The  struggle  men  now  think  of 
as  universal  and  typical  of  life,  is  not  the  clashing  of 
spear  and  shield  on  any  field  of  tourney,  nor  the  fencing 
of  the  soul  with  any  supernatural  foe,  seeking  its  dam- 
nation: it  is  the  mere  struggle  for  existence,  with  the 
survival  of  the  fittest  as  the  result :  a  scientific  idea,  and 
one  that  centres  attention  on  the  things  of  this  world. 
This  increases  the  sense  in  mankind  of  the  materialism 
[133] 


THE  TORCH 
of  human  life  and  the  importance  of  its  mortal  interests. 
Commerce  seconds  science  in  defining  this  struggle  as  a 
competition  of  trade,  a  conflict,  on  the  larger  scale,  of 
tariff  wars,  a  race  for  special  privilege  and  open  oppor- 
tunity in  new  countries.  Science  and  trade  are  almost 
as  large  a  part  of  life  now  as  righteousness  was  in  Mat- 
thew Arnold's  day:  he  reckoned  it,  I  believe,  at  three- 
quarters.  The  result  is  that  mankind  is  surrounded  with 
a  different  scheme  of  thought,  meditation  and  effort 
from  that  of  Spenser's  age.  He  was  near  the  ages,  that  we 
call  the  ages  of  faith :  he  was  not  far  from  the  old  Catho- 
lic idea  of  discipline;  he  was  not  enfranchised  from  su- 
pematuralism  in  Reformation  dogmas;  he  lived  when 
men  still  died  for  their  religion ;  —  all  of  which  is  to  say 
that  the  idea  of  the  spiritual  in  man's  life  and  its  im- 
portance, was  nigh  and  close  to  him.  In  our  literature 
there  is  much  presentation  of  moral  character,  in  the 
sense  of  the  side  that  a  man  turns  toward  his  fellow 
beings  in  society:  in  Scott,  Thackeray  and  in  Dickens, 
George  Eliot  —  to  name  the  greatest,  this  is  found ;  but 
such  spiritual  character  as  Spenser  made  the  subject 
of  his  meditation  and  picturing  is  not  found.  In  the  his- 
tory of  literature,  the  hero  of  action  has  always  ended  by 
developing  into  the  saintly  ideal :  so  it  was  in  Paganism 
from  Achilles  to  ^Eneas ;  so  it  was  in  medisevalism  from 
Roland  and  Lancelot  to  Arthur,  Galahad  and  Parsifal; 
[134] 


SPENSER 
and  in  this  chivalric  tradition  Spenser  is  the  last  term. 
Will  our  moral  ideal,  as  it  is  now  flourishing,  show  a 
similar  course  —  has  our  literature  of  the  democratic 
movement,  now  in  its  early  stages,  the  making  of  such  a 
saint  in  it  —  that  is,  of  the  man  to  whom  God  only  is 
real  ?  —  as  Paganism  and  medisevalism  in  their  day 
evolved  ? 

Spenser,  then,  being  so  remote  from  us,  in  all  ways  — 
the  question  is  natural,  why  read  his  poem  at  all  ?  Be- 
cause it  is  the  flower  of  long  ages :  because  you  command 
in  it  as  in  a  panorama  the  poetical  tradition  of  all  the 
great  imaginative  literature  in  previous  centuries,  classi- 
cal, mediaeval  and  Renaissance;  because  you  see  how 
Spenser,  by  his  appropriation  of  these  elements  became 
himself  the  Platonist,  the  artist,  the  moralist,  and  fused 
all  in  the  passion  for  beauty  on  earth  and  in  the  heavens 
above,  and  so  centred  his  whole  nature  toward  God; 
and  what  took  place  in  him  may  take  place,  according 
to  its  measure,  in  us.  For,  though  the  thoughts  of  men 
change  from  century  to  century,  and  one  guiding  prin- 
ciple yields  to  another,  and  the  ideal  life  is  built  up  in 
new  ways  in  successive  generations,  yet  the  soul's  life 
remains,  however  cast  in  new  forms  of  the  old  passion 
for  beauty  and  virtue.  If  Spenser  be  a  poet's  poet,  as 
they  say,  let  him  appeal  to  the  poet  in  you  —  for  in 
every  man  there  is  a  poet;  let  him  appeal  in  his  own  way, 
[Voo] 


THE  TORCH 

as  a  teacher  of  the  spiritual  hfe;  and,  if  my  wish  might 
prevail,  let  him  come  most  home  to  you  and  receive  inti- 
mate welcome  as  the  Puritan  lover  of  beauty. 


[136] 


VI 


MILTON 


Milton  is  a  great  figure  in  our  minds.  He  is  a  very  lonely 
figure.  For  one  thing,  he  has  no  companions  of  genius 
round  him;  there  is  no  group  about  him,  in  his  age. 
Again,  he  was  a  blind  old  man,  and  there  is  something  in 
bhndness  that,  more  than  anything  else,  isolates  a  man; 
and  in  his  case,  by  strange  but  powerful  contrast,  his 
blindness  is  enlarged  and  glorified  by  the  fact  that  he 
saw  all  the  glory  of  the  angels  and  the  Godhead  as  no 
other  mortal  eye  ever  beheld  them,  and  the  fact  that  he 
was  blind  makes  the  vision  itself  more  credible.  And 
thirdly  he  has  impressed  himself  on  men's  memories  as 
unique  in  character;  and,  in  his  age  defeated  and  given 
o'er,  among  his  enemies  exposed  and  left,  with  the  Puri- 
tan cause  lost,  he  is  the  very  type  and  pattern  of  a  great 
spirit  in  defeat  —  imprisoned  in  his  bhndness,  poor,  neg- 
lected, yet  still  faithful  and  the  master  of  liis  own  integ- 
rity; for  us,  almost  as  much  as  a  poet,  he  remains  the 
[139] 


THE  TORCH 

intellectual  champion  of  human  liberty.  So  through  cen- 
turies there  has  slowly  formed  itself  this  lonely  figure  in 
our  minds  as  our  thought  of  Milton,  and  as  Caesar  is  a 
universal  name  of  imperial  power,  the  name  of  Milton 
has  become  a  synonym  of  moral  majesty.  But  it  was  not 
thus  that  he  was  thought  of  in  his  own  times.  There  is  no 
evidence  that  Cromwell  or  the  other  important  men  of 
the  state  knew  that  Milton  was  greater  than  they,  or  that 
he  was  truly  great  at  all ;  to  them  he  was  pre-eminently 
a  secretary  in  the  state  department.  The  next  generation 
of  poets — Dryden — called  him  "the  old  schoolmas- 
ter," you  remember.  In  his  earUer  years  he  appealed  to 
the  taste  of  a  few  cultivated  and  travelled  gentlemen, 
like  Sir  Henry  Wotton,  as  a  graceful  and  noble-lan- 
guaged  poet;  but  it  was  a  full  generation  after  his  death 
that  he  was  accepted  into  the  roll  of  the  great,  by  Addi- 
son in  the  "  Spectator, "  and  the  next  century  was  well  on 
its  way  before  he  was  imitated  by  new  men  as  the  Eng- 
lish model  of  blank  verse.  In  the  literary  tradition  of 
England,  however,  he  is  now  estabhshed,  and  for  all  of 
us  he  stands  apart,  a  majestic  memory,  as  I  have  said, 
touched  with  the  sublimity  of  his  subject  and  with  the 
sublimity  of  his  own  character.  There  is,  too,  in  our 
thoughts  of  him,  something  grim,  something  of  the 
sterner  aspect  of  historical  Puritanism;  the  softness  of 
Spenser,  the  softness  of  his  youth,  had  gone  out  of  him, 
[140] 


MILTON 
and  he  had  all  the  hardness  of  man  in  him  —  he  was 
trained  down  to  the  last  ounce  —  he  was  austere.  Yet  I 
love  to  recall  his  youth  —  you  remember  the  fair  boy- 
face  of  the  first  portrait  —  a  face  of  singular  beauty;  and 
you  know  his  pink  and  white  complexion  was  such  at 
the  University  that  he  was  called  "  the  Lady  of  Christ's" ; 
and,  in  those  first  years  of  his  poetizing,  he  was  deep  in 
the  loveliest  verse  of  Greece  and  Italy,  in  Pindar  and 
Euripides,  in  Petrarch  and  Tasso,  as  well  as  in  Shaks- 
pere  and  Spenser  who  were  his  English  masters.  He  was 
a  young  humanist  —  filled  to  overflowing  with  the  new 
learning  and  its  artistic  products,  a  lover  of  them  and  of 
music,  and  of  everything  beautiful  in  nature  —  he  was 
especially  a  landscape-lover.  Even  then  the  clear  spirit 
—  the  white  soul  —  somewhat  too  unspotted  for  human 
affections  to  cling  about,  it  may  be  —  was  there;  you 
hear  it  singing  in  the  high  and  piercing  melody  of  the 
"Hymn  on  the  Morning  of  Christ's  Nativity,"  which 
happily  is  usually  a  child's  first  knowledge  of  him ;  a  cer- 
tain loofness  of  nature  he  has,  and  nowhere  do  you  find 
in  his  English  verse  —  nor  do  I  find  it  in  his  Latin  verse 
where  it  is  sometimes  thought  to  be  —  nowhere  do  you 
find  the  note  of  friendship,  of  that  companionableness 
which  is  often  so  charming  a  trait  in  the  young  lives  of 
the  poets.  But  within  his  own  reserves  —  and  perhaps 
the  more  precious  and  refined  for  that  very  reason  — 

[141] 


THE  TORCH 
there  was  the  same  sensuous  delight  in  the  artistic  things 
of  sense,  in  natural  beauty,  in  romantic  charm,  in  the 
lines  of  the  old  poets,  that  there  was  in  Spenser;  and  in 
this  he  was,  as  we  mark  Uterary  descent,  the  child  of 
Spenser,  though  of  course  it  was  fed  in  him  from  other 
sources  and  in  larger  measure,  too.  For  he  was  a  better 
scholar  than  Spenser  —  his  times  allowed  him  to  be  — 
and  he  had  a  far  more  powerful  intellect.  But,  in  these 
years  of  his  milder  and  happier  youth,  when  he  was  liv- 
ing in  the  country  in  his  long  studies  —  he  was  a  student 
at  ease  till  thirty  —  and  when  he  was  travelhng  in  Italy, 
he  was  in  the  true  path  of  Spenser  and  the  Renais- 
sance, the  path  of  beauty.  Thus  he  writes  in  a  letter 
to  a  friend  —  "What  besides  God  has  resolved  concern- 
ing me,  I  know  not,  but  this  at  least :  He  has  instilled  into 
me  at  all  events  a  vehement  love  of  the  beautiful.  Not 
with  so  much  labour  as  the  fables  have  it,  is  Ceres  said 
to  have  sought  her  daughter  Proserpine,  as  I  am  wont 
day  and  night  to  seek  for  this  idea  of  the  beautiful 
through  all  the  forms  and  faces  of  things  (for  many  are 
the  shapes  of  things  divine)  and  to  follow  it  leading  me 
on  as  with  certain  assured  traces."  This  is  that  same 
creed  of  Plato  that  entered  so  deeply  into  Spenser  — 
the  faith  in  the  divine  leading  of  beauty.  How  permanent 
its  doctrine  was  in  Milton's  mind  will  appear  later;  but 
here  its  presence  is  to  be  observed,  because  it  gives  to 
[142] 


MILTON 
Milton  the  true  quality  and  atmosphere  of  his  lost 
youth,  and  also  marks  the  great  difference  in  tone  and 
temper  between  the  earlier  poems  —  so  golden  phrased, 
so  melUfluous,  so  happy  —  and  the  poems  of  his  age,  the 
"  Paradise  Lost  "  and  "  Regained  "  and  the  "  Samson." 
In  "  Comus,"  more  particularly  in  "  L' Allegro  "  and  "  II 
Penseroso,"  is  the  young  Milton  —  he  that  the  fair- 
haired  boy  grew  into,  the  humanist  student,  the  writer 
of  ItaUan  sonnets,  the  "landscape-lover,  lord  of  lan- 
guage "  —  before  Cromwell's  age  laid  its  heavy  and 
manhood-enforcing  hand  on  the  poet  who  chose  first  to 
serve  his  country. 

But  it  is  the  poet  of  whom  I  am  to  speak ;  and,  perhaps, 
before  entering  on  the  subject  of  his  verse,  it  may  be  well 
first  to  endeavour  to  mark  his  place  more  precisely  in 
English  poetry  and  to  account,  partially  at  least,  for  its 
historical  distinction.  A  poet,  so  great  as  Milton,  you 
may  be  sure,  occupies  some  point  of  vantage  in  history ; 
he  embodies  some  cUmax  in  the  intellectual  or  artistic 
affairs  of  the  world;  and  in  Milton's  case  there  are,  I 
think,  two  historical  considerations  not  commonly 
brought  forward.  I  have  had  a  good  deal  to  say  about 
allegory.  It  was  the  characteristic  literary  form  of  the 
Middle  Ages ;  and  the  substitution  of  the  direct  story  of  hu- 
man life  in  its  place  is  one  of  the  traits  of  modern  times. 
You  remember  that  the  English  drama,  beginning  from 
[143] 


THE  TORCH 
miracle  plays  and  moralities  and  passing  through  the 
stage  of  historical  plays  came  finally  in  Shakspere  to  a 
representation  of  human  life  as  it  is  in  the  most  direct 
manner.  Those  of  you  who  saw  the  play  of  "Every- 
man "  last  year  have  a  very  vivid  idea  of  what  allegory  is 
in  a  drama,  and  how  such  a  drama  differs  from  "  Romeo 
and  Juliet."  In  "  Everyman  "  abstract  principles  are  per- 
sonified, and  their  play  in  life  illustrated ;  in  "  Romeo  and 
Juliet,"  the  passions  and  virtues  are  in  the  form  of  char- 
acter, are  humanized  as  we  say,  are  there  not  as  abstract 
principles  but  as  human  forces.  The  development  of 
English  drama  from  an  allegorical  mode  of  presenting 
life  and  character  to  a  human  realization  of  them  in  men 
and  women  culminated  in  Shakspere,  who  thus  stood  at 
a  historic  moment  of  climax  in  the  evolution  of  his  art. 
Now,  you  easily  recognize  the  likeness  of  such  an  alle- 
gorical play  as  "  Everyman "  to  Spenser's  "  Faerie 
Queene,"  in  its  method  of  personifying  the  virtues  and 
the  temptations.  Religious  narrative  poetry  remained 
allegorical,  and  mediaeval  in  artistic  method,  not  only  in 
Spenser,  but  in  his  successors,  such  as  the  Fletchers. 
Milton  was  the  first  English  poet  to  humanize  complete- 
ly the  characters  and  events  of  religious  story,  to  put  the 
religious  scheme  and  view  of  the  world  into  the  form  of 
human  things,  and  to  expel  from  the  work  the  abstract 
allegorical  element  wholly.  Thus  he  is  related  to  pre- 
[144] 


MILTON 
vious  narrative  religious  poetry  in  England  precisely  as 
Shakspere  is  to  the  moralities  of  early  drama.  He  stands 
at  this  point  of  climax  in  the  evolution  of  his  particular 
branch  of  poetic  art.  Religious  poetry  was  sixty  years 
later  than  dramatic  poetry  in  reaching  this  perfect  hu- 
manization  of  its  material ;  and  thus  it  happens  that  Mil- 
ton, though  so  much  younger  than  the  Elizabethans,  is 
commonly  thought  of  as  belonging  to  their  company  and 
in  fact  the  last  late  product  of  the  age  of  their  genius. 
Secondly,  we  are  accustomed  to  think  of  the  Renais- 
sance as  on  the  whole  an  affair  of  the  southern  nations, 
and  especially  of  Italy;  but  it  was  a  European  move- 
ment, a  wave  of  thought  and  peculiar  passion  that  slowly 
crept  up  the  North,  and  it  reached  its  furthest  point  in 
England,  and  there,  as  I  think,  it  reached  its  highest  lit- 
erary development.  Shakspere  was  the  climax  of  the  Re- 
naissance; its  passion  for  individuality,  for  a  free  career 
for  the  human  soul,  and  its  instinct  of  the  dignity  of  per- 
sonal life,  were  the  very  forces  to  unlock  most  potently 
dramatic  power;  and  in  Shakspere  this  was  accom- 
plished, and  you  know  how  besides  he  used  its  material 
and  lived  in  its  atmosphere.  Spenser,  also,  as  I  said  in  the 
last  lecture,  took  the  worship  of  beauty  and  the  idea  of 
the  courtier  from  the  Renaissance,  spiritualized  the  one 
and  Christianized  the  other,  and  gave  them  a  new  career 
in  English  Puritanism.  Milton  is  to  be  associated  with 
[145] 


THE  TORCH 

Shakspere  and  Spenser,  as  a  third  and  the  last  great 
representative  of  the  Renaissance  in  England,  and  as 
there  carrying  its  epic  power  to  a  degree  of  perfection  far 
beyond  what  it  had  reached  in  Italy,  exceeding  both 
Ariosto  and  Tasso ;  in  him  was  all  the  learning  and  taste 
of  the  Renaissance,  all  its  cultivation  of  individuality 
and  respect  for  it  —  in  both  matter  and  spirit  he  belong- 
ed fundamentally  to  that  movement,  and  was  its  latest 
climax.  I  therefore  define  his  historical  position  as  being 
the  point  at  which  religious  poetry  was  completely  hu- 
manized in  England,  and  at  which  the  Renaissance 
spirit  generally  as  a  European  movement  culminated  in 
epic  poetry. 

"  Paradise  Lost "  is  the  poem  by  which  Milton  lives. 
Fond  as  we  may  be  of  his  younger  verse,  and  apprecia- 
tive of  the  eloquence  of  "  Paradise  Regained  "  and  of  the 
tragic  simplicity  of  "Samson  Agonistes,"  yet  popular 
judgment  is  to  be  followed  in  finding  in  "  Paradise  Lost " 
the  true  centre  of  Milton's  genius.  Every  poet  who 
achieves  a  single  great  poem  puts  his  whole  mind  into  it, 
empties  his  mind  and  tells  all  he  knows ;  his  felicity  is  to 
find  a  subject  which  permits  him  to  do  this ;  such  was  the 
course  of  Homer  and  Virgil,  Dante,  Spenser,  Goethe,  to 
name  a  few  and  Milton  was  no  exception  to  the  rule. 
He  included  in  his  poem  the  entire  history  of  the  universe 
from  the  heaven  which  was  before  creation  to  the  millen- 
[146] 


MILTON 
nium  which  shall  be  the  consummation  of  all  things; 
and,  in  this  great  sphere  of  action  he  chose  as  the  objec- 
tive point  the  moral  relation  of  mankind  to  God,  cer- 
tainly the  highest  subject  in  importance;  and  in  elabor- 
ating his  work  he  used  all  the  wealth  of  his  literary 
knowledge  and  culture,  the  entire  literary  tradition  of 
the  race,  just  as  Spenser  did  —  only  more  broadly; 
whatever,  either  in  matter  or  method,  there  was  service- 
able in  past  literature  —  Hebrew,  Greek,  Latin,  Ital- 
ian, and  English  —  all  this  Milton  used.  He  grasped 
and  constructed  the  subject  with  great  mental  power 
and  artistic  skill;  although,  in  minor  parts,  his  conven- 
tional machinery  and  devices  have  been  attacked,  the 
leading  lines  of  his  construction  stand  clear  of  criticism. 
He  really  took  three  great  themes,  any  one  of  which 
would  have  furnished  forth  a  poem,  and  blended  them 
together  with  such  dexterity  that  they  are  seldom  sepa- 
rated even  in  analysis  —  so  perfect  is  the  unity  of  the  re- 
sulting whole.  In  the  first  place,  you  recognize  at  once  in 
"Paradise  Lost"  a  Christian  adaptation  of  the  Titan 
Myth.  The  rebellion  of  the  angels  is  conceived  as  a  war 
of  the  Titans  against  the  gods ;  and  is  treated  in  accord- 
ance with  Greek  imagination  as  a  conflict  in  which  the 
mountains  were  used  as  weapons :  — 

From  their  foundations,  loosening  to  and  fro, 
They  plucked  the  seated  hills,  with  all  their  load, 
[147] 


THE  TORCH 

Rocks,  waters,  woods,  and  by  the  shaggy  tops 
Uplifting,  bore  them  in  their  hands.  Amaze 
Be  sure,  and  terror,  seized  the  rebel  host 
When  coming  towards  them  so  dread  they  saw 
The  bottom  of  the  mountains  upward  turned  — 
Themselves  invaded  next,  and  on  their  Jieads 
Main  promontories  flung,  which  in  the  air 
Came  shadowing:  —     ... 
So  hills  amid  the  air  encountered  hills  — 
.     .     .     —  horrid  confusion  heaped 
Upon  confusion  roseT 

Satan  on  the  flood  of  hell  is  conceived  as  of  Titanic 
form: 

"  With  head  uplift  above  the  wave,  and  eyes 
That  sparkling  blazed;  his  other  parts  besides 
Prone  on  the  flood,  extended  long  and  large. 
Lay  floating  many  a  rood,  in  bulk  as  huge 
As  whom  the  fables  name  of  monstrous  size, 
Titanian  or  Earth-born,  that  warred  on  Jove, 
Briar eos  or  Typhon"  — 

and  you  recall  how  he  reared  himself  from  ofiF  the  fiery 
lake,  and  took  his  station  on  the  shore,  with  the  ponder- 
ous shield  whose  "broad  circumference  hung  on  his 
shoulders  like  the  moon,"  and  stayed  his  steps  with  his 
tall  spear  — 

"  To  equal  which  the  tallest  pine 
Hewn  on  Norwegian  hills,  to  be  the  mast 
Of  some  great  ammiral,  were  but  a  wand;  " 
[148] 


MILTON 

and  there  summoning  his  squadrons  loomed  over  them 
like  the  sun  "  in  dim  eclipse,  disastrous  twilight  shed- 
ding on  half  the  nations."  Such  is  Satan's  figure  at  the 
first,  and  it  is  by  such  images  of  Titanic  darkened  gran- 
deur that  his  form  is  most  vividly  remembered.  I  have 
spoken  of  the  difficulty  the  poets  have  had  in  defining 
the  forms  of  the  Titans  to  the  eye.  Milton  solves  the 
problem  by  ascribing  to  the  devil  and  his  angels  no  deter- 
minate form;  they  are,  so  to  speak,  collapsible  and  ex- 
tensible at  will ;  and  they  take  the  appropriate  scales  of 
proportion  in  whatever  scene  they  are  placed. 

It  is  common  to  tliink  of  Satan  as  the  true  hero  of  the 
poem,  and  as  an  imaginative  figure  he  certainly  occupies 
the  foreground ;  yet  to  Milton  he  was  a  hateful  being,  and 
I  am  convinced  that  familiarity  with  the  poem  takes 
from  him  that  admiration  which  properly  should  belong 
to  the  hero,  and  at  the  end  he  is  clearly  felt  as  the  object 
of  repulsive  evil,  whom  Milton  meant  him  to  be.  Mil- 
ton's method,  after  presenting  Satan  in  sombre  but  ma- 
jestic form,  is  gradually  to  debase  liim  to  the  eye  as  well 
as  to  the  mind.  Here  the  treatment  sets  him  apart  from 
any  conception  of  the  Titan  Prometheus  in  bonds;  for 
Prometheus  is  never  felt  to  be  debased  even  physically 
by  the  punishment  of  Jove.  The  first  revolt  of  the  reader's 
mind  from  its  initial  admiration  for  Satan  takes  place,  I 
think,  acutely  in  the  scene  at  the  gate  of  hell  when  he 
[149] 


THE  TORCH 
meets  Sin  and  Death.  The  association  of  Satan  with  such 
horrible  beings  as  they  are  represented  to  be,  and  the 
knowledge  that  his  intimacy  with  them  is  that  of  father- 
hood, shocks  the  mind  with  ugUness  —  ugliness  that  is 
almost  bestial  in  its  effect.  When  he  reaches  the  new 
earth,  after  his  address  to  the  Sun,  he  is  seen  transformed 
in  countenance  — 

"  Thus  while  he  spake,  each  passion  dimmed  his  face 
Thrice  changed  with  pale  —  ire,  envy  and  despair. 
Which  marred  his  borrowed  visage  —  " 

and  soon  he  is  "squat  Uke  a  toad"  at  the  ear  of  Eve; 
whence  touched  by  the  young  angel's  spear,  he  rises 
"the  grisly  King,"  so  changed  from  his  heavenly  self 
that  he  is  unrecognized.  Then,  after  one  more  grand  Ti- 
tanic figuring  of  his  might  —  the  most  impressive  of  all 
—  as  he  opposes  Gabriel :  — 

"On  the  other  side,  Satan,  alarmed. 
Collecting  all  his  might,  dilated  stood. 
Like  Teneriff  or  Atlas,  unremoved: 
His  stature  reached  the  sky,  and  on  his  crest 
Sat  Horror  plumed; — " 

after  this  unforgetable  and  heroic  figure,  Milton  dis- 
misses him  from  the  poem  in  the  scene  in  hell,  where,  re- 
turning after  his  triumph  to  take  the  applause  of  his  host, 
he  is,  in  the  moment  of  his  highest  boasting,  transformed 
[150] 


MILTON 
into  the  serpent  with  all  his  followers  in  like  forms  —  a 
scene  so  repellent  that  perhaps  none  has  been  more  ad- 
versely commented  on.  This  gradual  degradation  of  Sa- 
tan, in  his  form,  is,  it  seems  to  me,  a  cardinal  point  in  the 
poem.  It  is  to  be  associated  with  Milton's  idea  of  beauty 
—  that  Platonic  idea  which  I  mentioned.  The  first  ob- 
servation of  Satan  in  hell  is  the  lost  brightness  of  Beelze- 
bub whom  he  addresses: 

"  7/  thou  beest  he  —  but  oh,  how  fallen!  how  changed 
From  him,  xoho,  in  the  happy  realms  of  light 
Clothed  with  transcendant  brightness,  didst  outshine 
Myriads,  though  bright!  —  " 

When  he  comes  to  the  new  creation,  the  radiance  of  the 
sun  reminds  him  of  the  same  change  in  himself,  and 
when  the  young  angel  surprises  him  in  Eden,  it  is  his 
lost  beauty  that  he  mourns. 

"  So  spake  the  cherub:  and  his  grave  rebuke. 
Severe  in  youthful  beauty,  added  grace 
Invincible,  abashed  the  Devil  stood 
And  felt  how  aivful  goodness  is,  and  saw 
Virtue  in  her  shape  how  lovely  —  saio,  and  pined 
His  loss;  but  chiefly  to  find  here  observed 
His  lustre  visibly  impaired.  " 

The  power  of  beauty  over  him  is  the  last  vescige  of  his 
lost  nobility.  Thus  in  Eden  gazing  on  Adam  and  Eve, 
he  says,  — 

[151] 


THE  TORCH 

"  Whom  my  thoughts  pursue 
With  wonder,  and  could  love:  so  lively  shines 
In  them  divine  resemblance;  " 

and  just  before  the  temptation,  in  the  presence  of  Eve, 
he  felt  her  beauty  to  be  such  that  — 

"  Thai  space  the  evil  One  abstracted  stood 
From  his  own  evil,  and  for  the  time  remained 
Stupidly  good,  of  enmity  disarmed. 
Of  guile,  of  hate,  of  envy,  of  revenge.'^ 

It  is  only  by  a  recovery  of  his  evil  nature  that  he  gains 
power  to  go  on  with  his  deceit.  Such  rehcs  of  faded  glory 
as  his  brow  wore,  such  relics  of  the  sense  of  beauty  also 
remained  in  his  spirit.  The  debasement  of  his  form,  cul- 
minating in  the  scorpion  scene  in  hell,  is  —  for  Milton 
—  one  and  the  same  thing  with  the  corruption  of  his 
moral  nature,  and  is  in  fact  a  principal  means  of  charac- 
terization; for  in  each  new  act  Satan  takes  a  new  form. 
There  is  nothing  elsewhere  in  literature  quite  like  this. 
It  is,  however,  the  peculiar  meanness  of  his  revenge 
which  most  degrades  Satan's  character;  in  his  rebellion 
against  God,  in  his  unavailing  courage  when  powers  felt 
and  depicted  as  great  are  matched  against  omnipo- 
tence, in  the  mere  ruin  of  such  tremendous  power,  there 
are  sublime  elements;  but  in  his  triumph  over  mankind 
there  is  no  true  joining  of  forces  for  equal  encounter  — 
in  fact  Satan  is  never  brought  in  contact  with  Adam  di- 
[152] 


MILTON 

rectly  —  and  though  Paradise  is  surrounded  with 
guards  and  watched  over  by  Uriel  in  the  sun,  these  are 
no  real  defences ;  mankind  is  felt  to  be  unsheltered,  the 
power  of  Adam  and  Eve  to  remain  obedient  is  not  so  pre- 
sented as  to  seem  a  match  for  the  power  of  the  devil,  and 
Satan  consequently  appears  to  triumph  over  a  weak  and 
innocent  foe,  harmless  to  him,  whom  he  sacrifices  in  a 
malignant  spirit  of  revenge  by  ignoble  and  secret  ways. 
In  his  own  character,  and  apart  from  man,  Satan  em- 
bodies the  Renaissance  ideal  of  the  freedom  of  the  indi- 
vidual, of  the  affirmation  of  one's  own  life,  of  develop- 
ment of  one's  powers  and  qualities  and  opportunities  — 
he  is  like  a  brilliant,  unscrupulous,  rebellious  Itahan 
prince  having  his  own  way  with  the  world  he  is  born 
into;  to  conceive  of  him  as  resembling  an  English  rebel 
against  the  Crown,  or  at  all  indebted  to  that  character, 
except  perhaps  in  the  point  of  resolute  defiance,  is,  I 
think,  to  misconceive  him  altogether,  although  it  is  a 
common  view.  He  was,  on  the  contrary,  the  Renaissance 
prince  seeking  his  free  career,  valuing  individual  talent 
and  force  above  everything,  the  concentration  of  per- 
sonal faculty,  pride,  ambition  —  and  conscienceless  in 
his  determination  to  hve  all  his  life  out.  In  his  struggle 
with  omnipotence,  he  secures  respect  for  certain  quali- 
ties of  strength  which  in  alliance  with  virtue  are  great 
quaUties,  and  even  in  wickedness  do  not  lose  their  im- 

[153] 


THE  TORCH 
press! veness ;  but  in  his  easy  triumph  over  Eve  in  the 
Garden,  and  in  its  consequences  to  mankind,  he  be- 
comes contemptible  in  his  aim,  his  method,  and  his 
being. 

Certain  important  diflFerences  in  the  Titan  Myth  as 
treated  by  Milton  should  be  noticed.  You  observe  that 
the  Greek  situation  is  reversed:  the  angels  are  the 
younger  race  of  beings,  and  according  to  Greek  ideas 
should  have  succeeded  and  thereby  have  asserted  the 
principle  of  progress.  The  angels,  however,  were  de- 
feated. Of  course,  there  is  no  room  in  the  scheme  of  the 
universe,  as  Milton  conceived  it,  for  any  progress  —  the 
being  and  the  reign  of  God  are  already  perfect,  and 
progress  is  only  the  salvation  of  man,  that  is,  a  restora- 
tion of  things.  Restoration,  not  Revolution,  is  Milton's 
cardinal  idea.  It  follows  from  this  that  hell  is  necessarily 
the  end  of  the  angels ;  it  is  a  cul-de-sac,  a  blind  alley  —  it 
leads  nowhere  —  it  has  no  future;  the  poem  stops  in  that 
direction  as  if  it  had  run  against  a  wall.  The  denial  of 
progress  has  brought  everything  to  a  standstill,  with  eter- 
nal damnation  for  the  angels  and  ultimate  restoration 
for  mankind.  It  is  here,  I  think,  that  modern  sympathy 
parts  company  with  this  portion  of  the  poem  —  that  is, 
with  the  conception  of  hell  in  it.  Our  thoughts  are  so 
pledged  to  the  idea  of  progress,  to  the  thought  of  evolu- 
tion as  the  law  of  all  created  beings,  that  the  notion  of 
[154] 


MILTON 
hell  as  a  kind  of  sink  and  prison  of  the  universe  finds  no 
place  for  itself  in  our  minds.  The  only  thing  in  civiliza- 
tion that  resembles  hell  is  the  modem  jail,  and  that  we 
desire  most  potently  to  eliminate,  in  the  sense  that  it  shall 
not  be  a  place  that  leads  nowhere,  even  for  the  most  hard- 
ened. I  desire,  however,  only  to  set  sharply  over  against 
each  other  in  your  minds  the  Hebrew  fixity  of  Milton's 
thought  and  the  Greek  idea  of  progress,  as  they  are 
brought  out  by  the  mythic  wars  of  heaven  in  each  case; 
and  to  suggest  that  the  failure  of  the  poem  to  interest  the 
modem  mind  in  hell,  except  as  a  spectacle,  is  connected 
with  the  fundamental  denial  of  progress  in  it,  and  its 
departure  from  the  thought  of  development. 

The  second  great  theme  which  Milton  incorporated 
into  his  poem  is  the  Bower  of  Bliss.  This  is  the  theme  by 
means  of  which  love,  which  next  to  war  is  the  great  sub- 
ject of  poetry,  enters  into  the  epic;  the  hero  is  with- 
drawn from  battle,  and  tempted  to  forget  his  career  in 
the  world,  by  love  for  a  woman.  The  importance  of  the 
theme,  and  its  relative  proportion  of  interest  in  the  epic 
as  a  whole,  steadily  increased  —  it  was  a  convenient  way 
of  withdrawing  the  leading  character  and  giving  the  other 
heroes  an  opportunity  for  display  free  from  his  rivalry, 
it  was  interesting  in  itself  as  opening  up  the  whole  field 
of  the  romance  and  tragedy  of  love,  and  it  was  the  best 
kind  of  an  episode  to  vary  the  story.  Thus  the  loves  of 
[155] 


THE  TORCH 
^neas  for  Dido,  in  the  "  ^Eneid,"  and  of  Armida  for  Ri- 
naldo  in  "  Tasso,"  were  represented.  For  Milton  Eden  is 
Bower  of  Bliss,  in  this  sense.  It  freed  his  hand  for  de- 
scription of  nature  in  her  softest  scenes  and  in  the  at- 
mosphere of  love.  You  may  recall  Tennyson's  summary 
of  it,  in  his  lines  on  Milton  ■ — 

"  Me  rather  all  that  bowery  umeliness. 
The  brooks  of  Eden  mazily  murmuring. 
And  bloom  profuse,  and  cedar  arches 
Charm,  as  a  wanderer  out  in  ocean 
Where  some  refulgent  sunset  of  India, 
Streams  o'er  a  rich  ambrosial  ocean-isUt 
And  crimson-hued  the  stately  palm-woods 
Whisper  in  odorcrus  heights  of  even. " 

Here  Milton  had  the  characteristic  scenery  of  the  Bow- 
er of  Bliss,  and  he  elaborated  it  with  Renaissance  rich- 
ness of  luxurious  natural  detail.  The  situation  was  also 
characteristic,  and  the  power  of  woman  to  weaken  the 
moral  force  of  the  hero  through  love  was  illustrated :  the 
issue  only  was  different,  for  whereas  in  the  normal  epic 
the  hero  breaks  his  bonds  and  goes  back  to  his  career  — 
to  the  founding  of  Rome  or  the  capture  of  Jerusalem  — 
Adam  was  made  the  tragic  victim  of  his  fall,  and  with 
him  all  mankind.  Adam,  from  every  point  of  view,  holds 
an  unenviable  position,  for  a  hero:  he  never,  as  I  have 
said  is  brought  to  a  direct  encounter  with  Satan,  his 
[156] 


MILTON 
great  enemy,  and  in  this  round-about  conflict  in  which 
he  falls  through  the  temptation  of  Eve  his  defeat  is  irre- 
parable. It  is  singular  to  observe  that  in  the  only  other 
English  poem  of  epical  action  —  in  Tennyson's  "  Idylls 
of  the  King,"  Arthur  is  similarly  a  hero  of  defeat;  the 
breaking  of  the  Round  Table  is  the  catastrophe,  brought 
about  by  the  sin  of  Guinevere  in  the  orthodox  conven- 
tional way,  and  Arthur,  when  he  sails  away  "  to  heal  him 
of  his  grievous  wound  "  leaves  a  lost  cause  behind  him  in 
the  world.  It  would  be  a  curious  enquiry  —  could  one 
answer  it  —  why  the  two  great  epic  poems  of  the  English 
represent  the  cause  of  the  higher  life  as  suffering  a  tem- 
porary overthrow  in  this  world.  Not  to  enter  upon  that, 
however,  I  have  only  time  to  point  out  that,  as  it  seems 
to  me,  modem  sympathy  also  parts  company  with  Mil- 
ton in  this  portion  of  the  poem,  inasmuch  as  it  has 
grown  unnatural  for  us  to  regard  womanhood  as  the  pe- 
culiar means  by  which  moral  character  is  impaired,  and 
the  world  lost ;  rather  we  go  with  Spenser  in  his  convic- 
tion that  womanhood  is  the  inspiration  of  noble  life.  The 
character  of  Eve  as  Milton  drew  it  is  from  a  very  an- 
cient world  of  myth  and  race-thought:  the  influence  of 
chivalry  on  the  worldly  side,  and  on  the  spiritual  side 
the  influence  of  the  beatification  of  motherhood  in  the 
Virgin  Mary,  have  profoundly  affected  and  changed  the 
ancient  thought,  and  though  not  unfelt  in  Milton  they 
[157] 


THE  TORCH 

have  not  sufficient  power  in  him  to  modify  essentially 
the  primitive  conception  of  Eve.  It  is  the  more  unfortu- 
nate that  Milton's  own  temper,  as  a  husband,  was  such 
that  he  has  vigorously  emphasized  in  his  poem  the  infe- 
riority of  woman  to  man,  her  natural  subjection  to  him, 
and  in  general  has  left  to  her  only  that  loveliness  and 
charm  which  most  appealed  to  him  as  a  poet. 

The  third  great  theme  of  Milton  is  a  cosmogony  — 
that  is,  a  story  of  creation :  it  is  told  by  Raphael  to  Adam, 
and  it  is  supplemented  by  the  history  of  mankind  which 
is  shown  to  Adam  prophetically  by  Michael.  It  has  been 
the  fashion  of  science  to  ridicule,  as  Huxley  did,  Mil- 
ton's description  of  the  origin  of  living  creatures ;  but  as 
a  tale  of  creation,  his  story  is  quite  the  most  consistent 
and  nobly  imaginative  of  any  that  poets  have  told,  and 
his  panorama  of  history  is  effectively  unrolled,  with 
comprehensiveness,  vigour  of  thought  and  vividness  of 
scene.  In  two  respects,  nevertheless,  modern  sympathy 
parts  company  with  Milton  here,  too.  He  adopted  as  his 
scheme  of  the  universe  of  space,  you  remember,  the 
older  or  Ptolemaic  idea,  that  the  earth  is  the  centre,  and  is 
surrounded  by  the  spheres,  one  inside  another,  till  you 
reach  the  outermost  or  primum  mobile.  He  knew,  of 
course,  the  Copemican  scheme,  which  we  now  all  hold, 
when  we  think  of  the  relation  of  the  earth  to  the  sun  and 
stars.  It  was,  I  think,  the  classical  prepossession  of  his 
[158] 


MILTON 
mind  —  his  desire  for  a  world  limited,  closed  and  clear, 
like  a  Greek  temple  —  which  led  him  to  adopt  this  older 
scheme  of  the  universe.  But  the  result  is  that  the  rest  of 
the  poem  is  apt  to  seem  as  antiquated  as  its  celestial 
geography.  Again,  in  his  view  of  history,  he  necessarily 
made  human  history  unroll  as  a  consequence  of  the  fall 
of  Adam,  and  gave  an  importance  to  its  Biblical  events, 
which  they  can  only  retain  in  a  limited  way.  The  centre 
and  movement  of  history  are  now  so  differently  con- 
ceived by  the  general  modem  mind  that  Milton's  ac- 
count of  history  has  little  essential  interest  to  the  reader. 
Such,  as  it  lies  in  my  mind,  is  the  composition  of  the 
"  Paradise  Lost "  —  a  Titan  Myth,  a  Bower  of  Bliss, 
and  a  Cosmogony  or  story  of  creation  and  history, 
blended  into  one  unified  poem  in  which  the  central  event 
is  the  fall  of  Adam.  It  is  a  poem  of  the  Renaissance,  the 
last  great  product  of  that  movement  flowering  in  the  far 
and  Puritan  North ;  it  is  enriched  with  all  the  treasures 
of  the  New  Learning,  softened  with  all  the  imaginative 
graces  of  humanism;  and  in  the  great  character  of  Sa- 
tan, it  presents,  on  his  noble  side,  the  most  magnificent 
embodiment  of  the  Renaissance  ideal  of  free  and  impe- 
rious individuality,  and  on  his  ignoble  side  it  reflects 
some  of  the  fairest  gleams  of  Platonic  philosophy.  I  have 
indicated  in  what  important  ways  it  seems  disconnected 
with  the  modem  mind,  in  its  scientific  and  historic 
[159] 


THE  TORCH 
schemes,  in  its  primitive  view  of  the  evil  of  womanhood, 
and  in  its  opposition  to  the  idea  of  progress.  I  should 
perhaps  sum  this  last  idea  to  a  point,  and  say  that  in  the 
poem  the  charter  of  free-will  which  the  Creator  gives 
to  the  angels  and  to  Adam  operates  as  a  limitation  on 
omnipotence;  it  is  impossible  for  the  modern  mind  to 
look  on  the  Creator  except  as  the  giver  of  good ;  and  yet 
his  gift  in  this  poem  so  operates  as  to  make  his  omnipo- 
tence continually  manifest  in  the  act  of  damnation ;  it 
operates  to  damn  the  angels  through  their  revolt,  to 
damn  Adam  through  his  fall,  and  to  damn  mankind 
through  Adam.  Within  the  limits  of  the  action  described, 
the  poem  is  thus  from  the  first  line  to  the  last  a  poem  of 
the  damnation  of  things,  in  which  the  fact  of  final  partial 
restoration  is  present  as  an  intention  and  promise  only. 
This  is  what  makes  it  a  poem  of  past  time,  and  removes 
it  far  from  the  modern  mind.  For  the  democratic  idea  — 
which  is  the  modern  mind  —  is  a  power  to  save :  it  will 
have  no  prisons  of  vengeance,  no  servile  nor  outcast 
races,  no  closed  gates  of  hopeless  being.  "Paradise 
Lost "  is  thus  set  behind  us,  as  an  embodiment  of  a  his- 
torical phase  of  the  Christian  idea  —  like  Dante. 

I  am  aware  that  the  verdict  seems  adverse  to  Milton; 

but  it  is  not  so  in  reality,  though  I  desire  to  make  plain 

the  fact  that  "  Paradise  Lost "  is  now  a  historical  poem, 

a  past  event  in  the  imaginative  life  of  the  race.  But  no 

[160] 


MILTON 
words  I  can  use  would  sufficiently  express  the  admira- 
tion which  this  poem  excites  in  me  —  not  merely  for  its 
unrivalled  music,  nor  for  its  style  which  Matthew  Ar- 
nold thought  keeps  it  alive,  but  for  its  construction  as  an 
act  of  intellect,  for  its  sublime  imagination  in  dealing 
with  infinite  space,  infinite  time,  and  eternity  and  the 
beings  of  eternity;  for  its  beautiful  surface  in  the  scenes 
in  Paradise,  its  idyllic  sweetness  and  charm,  the  habitual 
eloquence  and  noble  demeanour  in  the  characters;  nor 
do  I  find  its  later  books  less  excellent,  in  which  austere 
thought  and  nakedness  of  idea  more  appear  —  the  char- 
acteristics of  the  poet  coming  into  his  own,  and  content 
with  truth  unadorned,  simple  and  plain  —  the  sign  and 
proof,  of  which  "Paradise  Regained"  and  "Samson 
Agonistes  "  are  greater  examples,  that  as  a  poet  he  was 
perfected.  Small  in  amount,  indeed,  is  the  verse  that  I 
have  read  more  often;  such  strength,  such  exquisiteness, 
such  elevation,  he  has  no  rival  in,  for  power  and  grace, 
for  refinement ;  his  voice  is  master  of  his  theme;  and  he  is 
seated  in  the  heavens  of  poetry  where  Shelley  saw  him  — 

"  The  third  among  the  sons  of  light." 


[161] 


The  Torch 
vn 


WORDSWORTH 


We  approach  our  own  times ;  and  if,  hitherto,  literature 
has  seemed  to  us  a  somewhat  far-off  thing,  a  thing  of  the 
Greek  Myth,  of  chivalric  allegory,  of  the  Renaissance 
hero,  it  should  now  grow  near  and  fast  to  us  as  our  chief 
present  aid  in  leading  that  large  race-life  of  the  mind 
whose  end,  as  I  have  said,  is  to  free  the  individual  soul. 
The  notion  that  poetry  is  a  thing  remote  from  life  is  a 
singular  delusion ;  it  is  more  truly  to  be  described  as  the 
highway  of  our  days,  though  we  tread  it,  as  children 
tread  the  path  of  innocence,  without  knowing  it.  Noth- 
ing is  more  constant  in  the  life  of  boy  or  man  than  the 
outgoing  of  his  soul  into  the  world  about  him,  and  this 
outgoing,  however  it  be  achieved,  is  the  act  of  poetry. 
It  is  in  the  realm  of  nature  that  these  journeys  first  take 
place ;  nature  is  a  medium  by  which  the  soul  passes  out 
into  a  larger  existence;  and  as  nature  is  very  close  to  all 
men,  perhaps  our  experience  with  her  offers  the  most 
[165] 


THE  TORCH 
universal,  certainly  it  offers  the  most  elementary,  illus- 
tration of  the  poetical  Ufe  which  all  men,  in  some  meas- 
ure lead.  Wordsworth  is,  pre-eminently,  a  guide  in  this 
region;  and,  as  he  was  less  indebted  than  poets  usually 
are  to  the  great  tradition  of  literature  in  past  ages, 
poetry  in  him  seems  more  exclusively  a  thing  of  the  pres- 
ent Ufe,  contemporary  and  altogether  our  own.  Such  a 
poet,  endeavouring  by  a  conscious  reform  to  renew 
poetry  in  his  age  and  bring  it  home  to  man's  bosom, 
eUminating  the  conventional  ways,  images,  and  lang- 
uage even  of  the  poetic  past,  is  necessarily  thrown  back 
on  nature,  in  the  external  world,  and  on  character,  in  the 
internal  world,  for  his  subject-matter;  history,  except  in 
contemporary  forms,  will  be  far  from  him,  and  of  myth 
and  chivalry,  of  Plato  and  the  Italians,  though  he  will 
have  his  share,  he  will  have  the  least  possible.  This  may 
leave  his  verse  bare  and  monotonous  in  quality,  but 
what  substance  it  does  contain  will  have  great  vitality, 
for  it  comes  directly  from  the  man.  You  will  observe, 
however,  that  his  narrower  scope  of  learning,  treatment, 
and  theme  makes  no  difference  in  the  essential  point 
of  interest.  His  longest  and  most  deliberate  poem  — 
that  one  into  which  he  tried  to  empty  his  entire  mind, 
as  I  said  the  other  night  —  "  The  Prelude,"  is  the  history 
of  the  formation  of  his  mind,  he  says ;  that  is,  plainly,  his 
subject  is  the  same  as  Spenser's  —  how  in  our  days  is  a 
[166] 


WORDSWORTH 
human  soul  brought  to  its  fullness  of  power  and  grace  ? 
The  manner,  the  story,  the  accessories,  the  entire  colour 
and  atmosphere,  are  changed  from  what  they  were  in 
the  Ehzabethan  times,  but  the  question  abides.  Spenser 
is  hardly  aware  that  nature  has  anything  to  do  with 
forming  the  soul ;  to  Wordsworth,  nature  seems  its  chief 
nourishment  and  fosterer,  almost  its  creator.  I  desire  to 
illustrate  how  Wordsworth  represented  the  outgoing  of 
the  soul  in  nature,  as  a  part  of  its  discipline,  its  educa- 
tion in  life,  hke  the  quest  of  the  Knights  in  Spenser. 

When  you  go  out  to  walk  alone  in  a  scene  of  natural 
beauty,  your  senses  are  first  excited  and  interested ;  but 
often  there  arise  in  consequence  feeUngs  and  ideas  har- 
monious with  the  scene,  and  emotionally  touched  with 
it,  which  gradually  absorb  your  consciousness;  and  at 
last  you  find  yourself  engaged  in  a  mood  —  perhaps  of 
memory  —  from  which  the  external  scene  has  entirely 
dropped  away  or  round  which  it  is  felt  only  as  a  nimbus 
or  halo  of  beauty,  or  mystery  or  calm.  This  happens  con- 
stantly and  normally  to  all  of  us,  and  it  is  an  act  of 
poetry ;  for  it  is  the  very  method  and  secret  of  the  lyric. 
The  poet  receiving  some  impulse  through  his  senses 
delights  in  it,  and  rises  by  natural  harmony  to  feelings 
and  ideas  that  belong  with  such  joy,  and  ends  in  the 
higher  pleasure  to  which  his  senses  have  served  him  as 
the  stairway  of  divine  surprise.  Such  a  poem  is  Bums's 
[167] 


THE  TORCH 
"Highland  Mary";  he  begins  with  the  outer  scene, 
woods  and  the  summer,  and  you  will  notice  how  at  the 
end  all  has  dropped  away  except  the  love  in  his  heart: 

"  Ye  banks,  and  braes,  and  streams  around 

The  castle  o'  Montgomery, 
Green  be  your  woods,  and  fair  your  flowers. 

Your  waters  never  drumlie! 
There  simmer  first  unfald  her  robes. 

And  there  the  longest  tarry; 
For  there  I  took  my  last  fareweel 

O'  my  sweet  Highland  Mary. 

How  sweetly  bloomed  the  gay  green  birk. 

How  rich  the  hawthorn  s  blossom. 
As  underneath  their  fragrant  shadct 

I  clasped  her  to  my  bosom! 
The  golden  hours,  on  angel  wings. 

Flew  o'er  me  and  my  dearie; 
For  dear  to  me,  as  light  and  life. 

Was  my  sweet  Highland  Mary. 

Wi'  monie  a  vow,  and  locked  embrace. 

Our  parting  was  fu'  tender; 
And,  pledging  aft  to  meet  again. 

We  tore,  oursels  asunder; 
But  oh!  fell  death's  untimely  frost. 

That  nipt  my  flower  sae  early! 
Now  green  's  the  sod,  and  cauld  's  the  clay. 

That  wraps  my  Highland  Mary. 
[168] 


WORDSWORTH 

Oh,  pale,  pale  now,  those  rosy  lips, 

I  aft  hae  kissed  sae  fondly; 
And  closed  for  aye  the  sparkling  glance. 

That  dwelt  on  me  sae  kindly! 
And  mouldering  now  in  silent  dust. 

That  heart  that  lo'ed  me  dearly! 
But  still  within  my  bosom's  core 

Shall  live  my  Highland  Mary." 

His  heart  has  taken  the  place  of  all  the  world  as 
Mary's  dwelling. 

This  experience,  this  course  of  emotional  thought,  is 
the  habit  of  the  human  heart;  it  is  repeated  countless 
times  in  any  man's  life.  In  each  case  the  poem  depends 
only  on  where  we  stop  our  minds.  We  may  stop  in  the 
outer  scene,  and  have  only  beautiful  description :  we  may 
go  on  into  the  mood  of  imagination  or  memory,  and  end 
there;  we  may  go  further,  and  reach  some  contact  with 
divine  things,  vnth.  God  in  nature.  It  is  easy  to  illustrate 
the  matter  from  Wordsworth,  for  he  has  himself  defined 
these  stages.  You  remember  his  account  of  his  boyish 
skating  on  the  ice: 

**  — All  shod  with  steel 

We  hissed  along  the  polished  ice,  in  games 
Confederate,  imitative  of  the  chase 
And  woodland  pleasures,  —  the  resounding  horut 
The  pack  loud-bellowing,  and  the  hunted  hare. 
[169] 


THE  TORCH 

So  thro2igh  the  darkness  arid  the  cold  we  flew. 
And  not  a  voice  was  idle:  with  the  din 
Meanwhile  the  precipices  rang  aloud; 
The  leafless  trees  and  every  icy  crag 
Tinkled  like  iron;  xohile  the  distant  hills 
Into  the  tumult  sent  an  alien  sound 
Of  melancholy,  not  unnoticed,  while  the  stars. 
Eastward,  were  sparkling  clear,  and  in  the  west 
The  orange  sky  of  evening  died  away. 

Not  seldom  from  the  uproar  I  retired 
Into  a  silent  hay,  —  or  sportively 
Glanced  sideway,  leaving  the  tumultuous  throng. 
To  cut  across  the  reflex  of  a  star. 
Image,  that,  flying  still  before  me,  gleamed 
Upon  the  glassy  plain:  and  oftentimes. 
When  we  had  given  our  bodies  to  the  wind. 
And  all  the  shadowy  banks  on  either  side 
Came  sweeping  through  the  darkness,  spinning  still 
The  rapid  line  of  motion,  then  at  once 
Have  I,  reclining  back  upon  my  heels. 
Stopped  short;  yet  still  the  solitary  cliffs 
Wheeled  by  me  —  even  as  if  the  earth  had  rolled 
With  visible  motion  her  diurnal  round! 
Behind  me  did  they  stretch  in  solemn  train. 
Feebler  and  feebler,  and  I  stood  and  watched 
Till  all  was  tranquil  as  a  summer  sea" 

Any  boy,  who  has  skated  on  the  river,  has  hved  that 
poem:  has  had  the  physical  sense  of  the  scene,  which 
arouses  in  him  a  certain  reverberation  of  feeling.  The 
[170] 


WORDSWORTH 
second  stage  —  that  of  youth  —  is  as  usual,  though  in 
Wordsworth  it  was   uncommonly  prolonged  and  in- 
tense : 

"  Though  changed,  no  doubt,  from  what  I  was  when  first 
I  came  among  these  hills;  when  like  a  roe 
I  hounded  o'er  the  mountains,  by  the  sides 
Of  the  deep  rivers,  and  the  lonely  streams. 
Wherever  nature  led:  more  like  a  man 
Flying  from  something  that  he  dreads,  than  one 
Who  sought  the  thing  he  loved.  For  nature  then 
(The  coarser  pleasures  of  my  boyish  days, 
And  their  glad  animal  movements  all  gone  by) 
To  me  was  all  in  all.  —  /  cannot  paint 
What  then  I  was.  The  sounding  cataract 
Haunted  me  like  a  passion:  the  tall  rock. 
The  mountain,  and  the  deep  and  gloomy  wood. 
Their  colours  and  their  forms,  were  then  to  me 
An  appetite:  a  feeling  and  a  love. 
That  had  no  need  of  a  remoter  charm. 
By  thought  supplied,  or  any  interest 
Unborrowed  from  the  eye.  —  Thai  time  is  past. 
And  all  its  aching  joys  are  now  no  more. 
And  all  its  dizzy  raptures." 

Here  the  physical  scene  is  less  felt  —  the  excitement,  the 
reverberation,  is  greater.  There  is  the  third  stage,  to 
which  in  this  poem  he  immediately  passed  on : 

"  For  I  have  learned 
To  look  on  nature,  not  as  in  the  hour 
Of  thoughtless  yovih;  but  Jiearing  oftentimes 
[171] 


THE  TORCH 

The  still,  sad  music  of  humanity, 

Nor  Iiarsh  nor  grating,  though  of  ample  power 

To  chasten  and  subdue.  And  I  have  felt 

A  presence  that  disturbs  me  with  the  joy 

Of  elevated  ihougJUs;  a  sense  sublime 

Of  something  far  more  deeply  interfused. 

Whose  dwelling  is  the  light  of  setting  suns. 

And  the  round  ocean,  and  the  living  air. 

And  the  blue  sky,  and  in  the  mind  of  man: 

A  motion  and  a  spirit,  that  impels 

All  thinking  things,  all  objects  of  all  thought. 

And  rolls  through  all  things." 

Here  the  physical  scene  has  become  abstract  and  ele- 
mental —  diaphanous  beauty  —  and  he  is  in  the  pres- 
ence of  the  divine  power  shining  through  its  veils.  Na- 
ture, beginning  with  the  awe  of  boyhood,  ripening  into 
the  passion  and  high  delight  of  youth,  matures  in  man- 
hood in  the  spiritual  insight  which  makes  the  daily 
process  of  life  in  merely  living  under  the  sky  and  in  sight 
of  earthly  beauty  an  act  of  worship.  It  is  plain,  as  I  said, 
that  the  degree  to  which  any  man  may  live  Wordsworth's 
poem  depends  only  on  where  his  mind  stops  in  its  ordi- 
nary human  process,  whether  with  the  boy  on  the  ice,  the 
youth  on  the  mountains  or  the  man  with  "  the  light  of 
setting  suns.  "  In  all  these  cases,  you  will  notice,  Words- 
worth represents  the  soul  as  going  out  from  him  into 
the  large  material  sphere. 

[172] 


WORDSWORTH 
Wordsworth,  however,  was  acutely  conscious  of  the 
reaction  of  nature  on  mankind,  of  its  formative  power 
over  men  and  their  Hves.  The  idea  is  most  famihar  to  us 
as  the  influence  of  the  environment;  and  we  think  of  a 
sea-coast  people,  like  the  Greeks,  as  differing  from  a 
mountaineer  people,  like  the  Swiss,  because  of  their 
natural  surroundings.  The  idea,  however,  is  more  pre- 
cise than  that.  The  field  which  the  farmer  tills  slowly 
bends  his  form  to  itself.  You  remember  Millet's  famous 
painting  "  The  Angelus. "  The  peasant  who  is  its  centre 
has  been  physically  formed  by  toiling  in  the  fields  where 
he  stands ;  you  feel  as  you  look,  that  the  landscape  itself 
is  summed  up,  and  almost  embodied  in  him,  its  crea- 
ture, and  the  picture  is  spiritualized,  and  made  a  type  of 
our  common  humanity,  by  the  sound  of  the  Angelus 
reflected  in  his  prayerful  attitude.  That  is  the  way  that 
Wordsworth  conceived  of  nature  as  forming  his  dales- 
men and  shepherds.  There  is  this  landscape  quality  in 
all  his  memorable  characters;  you  think  of  them,  you  see 
them,  in  connection  with  the  soil.  Thus  you  recall  the 
figure  of  the  Reaper;  you  see  her  at  her  task  in  the  field, 
and  the  song  she  sings : 

"  The  music  in  my  heart  I  bore 

Long  after  it  was  heard  no  more"  — 

that  song  unifies  the  poem  and  spiritualizes  it,  precisely 
[173] 


THE  TORCH 
as   the   prayer  does   in  "The  Angelus."  So  you   see 
"The  Leech-Gatherer: " 

"  In  my  mind's  eye  I  seemed  to  see  him  face 
About  the  weary  moors  continually 
Wandering  about  alone  and  silently;"  — 

So,  too,  Simon  Lee,  the  old  huntsman,  and  Matthew 
at  his  daughter's  grave,  and  Michael,  the  builder  of  the 
sheep-fold,  and  Ruth,  and  good  Lord  Cli£Pord,  are 
landscape  figures. 

Wordsworth  carried  his  thought  of  the  formative 
power  of  nature  beyond  this  point,  and  to  take  at  once 
the  characteristic  poem,  he  saw  nature  forming  the  soul 
of  a  woman : 

"  Three  years  she  grew  in  sun  and  shower. 
Then  Nature  said,  *  A  lovelier  fioiver 
On  earth  was  never  sown; 
This  child  I  to  myself  will  take; 
She  shall  be  mine,  and  I  will  make 
A  lady  of  my  own. 

^Myself  will  to  my  darling  be 

Both  law  and  imptdse:  and  unih  me 

The  girl,  in  rock  and  plain. 

In  earth  and  heaven,  in  glade  and  bower. 

Shall  fed  an  overseeing  power 

To  kindle  or  restrain. 

[174] 


WORDSWORTH 

'She  shall  be  sportive  as  the  fawn 
Thai  toUd  with  glee  across  the  lawn 
Or  up  the  mountain  springs; 
And  hers  shall  be  the  breaihing  balm. 
And  hers  the  silence  and  the  calm 
Of  mute  insensate  things. 

'  The  floating  clouds  their  state  shall  lend 

To  her;  for  her  the  willow  bend: 

Nor  shall  she  fail  to  see 

Even  in  the  motions  of  the  storm 

Grace  that  shall  mould  the  maiden's  form 

By  silent  sympathy. 

*  The  stars  of  midnight  shall  be  dear 

To  her;  and  she  shall  lean  her  ear 

In  many  a  secret  place 

Where  rivulets  dance  their  wayward  round. 

And  beauty  born  of  murmuring  sound 

Shall  pass  into  her  face. 

'And  vital  feelings  of  delight 

Shall  rear  her  form  to  stately  height. 

Her  virgin  bosom  swell; 

Such  thoughts  to  Lucy  I  will  give 

While  she  and  I  together  live 

Here  in  this  happy  dell.* " 

The  poem  comes  to  its  climax  in  the  thought  that 

"beauty  bom  of  murmuring  sound,  shall  pass  into  her 

face. "  There  is  nothing  extravagant  in  the  idea.  You 

[175] 


THE  TORCH 
have  all  seen  a  face  transfigured  while  listening  to  mu- 
sic, or  to  the  sea ;  and  the  thought  is  that  such  listening 
being  habitual,  the  expression  becomes  habitual,  and 
not  only  that  but  the  peace  and  joy  and  inner  harmony, 
which  the  expression  denotes,  have  become  habitual, 
that  is,  parts  of  character.  Wordsworth  displays  his 
thought  more  at  length  in  the  "Tintern  Abbey"  lines,  in 
his  counsel  to  his  sister  and  his  confessions  of  his  own 
life  with  nature.  In  consequence  of  this  general  attitude 
of  mind  toward  the  educating  power  of  nature,  Words- 
worth held  his  maxim,  that  we  "  can  feed  this  mind  of 
ours  with  a  wise  passiveness. " 

He  had  a  faith  as  perfect  as  that  of  the  Concord  phil- 
osophers in  the  alms  of  the  idle  hour.  And  he  did  not 
mean  merely  that  thoughts  and  impressions  stream  in  on 
one,  who  expands  his  petals  to  the  flying  pollen  of 
heaven,  or  that  moral  instances  like  the  lesson  of  the 
Celandine  will  store  his  collector's  box,  but  that  inti- 
macy —  habitual  intimacy  with  the  highest  truths  of 
the  soul  —  is  reached  in  this  way.  He  had  the  impres- 
sion that  childhood  was  especially  susceptible  to  these 
influences  and  revelations;  and  the  glorification  of 
childhood  which  is  a  marked  trait  of  his  most  deeply- 
felt  verse,  lies  in  this  neighbourhood  of  its  being  to  nature 
and  nature's  revelations.  In  his  ode  on  the  "  Intimations 
of  Immortality  "  in  childhood  he  pours  forth,  in  the 
[176] 


WORDSWORTH 
most   passionate    and    eloquent    phrase,  his    clearest, 
most  vivid    and    most    penetrating    intuitions    of   the 
power   of  nature  in  these  ways,  on  the  boy  and  the 
man. 

Such  are  some  of  the  moods  in  which  Wordsworth 
conceived  the  operation  of  nature  on  man  as  moulding 
both  general  and  individual  life,  the  thoughts  and  emo- 
tions of  men  and  women,  and  the  soul  of  childhood,  as  if 
nature  were  the  delegated  hand  of  God  to  shape  our 
lives,  and  carried  with  its  touch  some  power  to  impart 
heavenly  wisdom.  Wordsworth,  you  observe,  had  a  very 
primitive  mind ;  in  that  act  of  gazing  on  setting  suns  he  is 
not  far  from  being  a  sun-worshipper :  he  still  can  beheve 
that  "  every  flower  enjoys  the  air  it  breathes. "  He 
conceives  of  nature,  as  an  element,  in  grand  lines;  and 
he  thinks  of  the  phases  of  human  life  even  —  of  its  great 
occupations,  its  affections  and  sorrows,  almost  as  if  they 
were  parts  of  nature  —  even  more  closely  united  to  it 
and  with  greater  kindliness  than  Virgil  represented 
them  in  the  Georgies.  This  simple,  primitive,  elemen- 
tary mind  underlies  his  thought  of  childhood,  too,  and 
it  appears,  perhaps,  most  significantly  in  the  fact  that 
when  through  nature  he  touches  on  the  boundaries  of 
divine  being,  he  achieves  no  more  than  a  sense  of  the 
presence  of  God  in  nature  —  it  is  only  a  silent  presence 
—  he  does  not  find,  so  far  as  I  can  see,  at  any  time 
[177] 


THE  TORCH 
the  voice  of  God  there.  This  is  the  primitive   mood  of 
savage  and  pagan  man. 

Perhaps  it  may  be  well  to  consider  for  a  moment  the 
place  of  nature  in  modem  life,  apart  from  Wordsworth, 
Lucretius,  who  first  took  a  scientific  view  of  the  world, 
as  a  poet,  found  in  nature  the  inveterate  hard  foe  of 
mankind :  he  it  was  who  first  saw  the  careless  gods  look 
down  upon 

"An  ill-used  race  of  men  that  cleave  the  soil. 
Sow  the  seed  and  reap  the  harvest  with  enduring  toil. 
Storing  yearly  little  dues  of  wheat,  and  vnne,  and  oil. 
Till  they  perish." 

Virgil,  as  I  have  said,  felt  rather  the  kindly  co-operation 
of  nature  with  man  in  producing  the  fruits  of  the  field, 
and  the  flocks  and  herds  of  the  hills,  to  feed  and  clothe 
us.  Our  view  is  not  so  much  that  of  Lucretius,  of  the 
opposition,  but  rather  of  the  indifference  of  nature.  She 
knows  not  mercy,  nor  justice,  nor  chastity,  nor  any 
human  virtue ;  and  man  in  emerging  from  her  world  lives 
in  a  sphere  of  thought,  conduct,  and  aspiration  to  which 
she  is  a  stranger.  Yet,  that  kindly  co-operation  that  Virgil 
saw,  still  continues  on  the  lower  levels  of  life,  and  the 
great  change  is  that,  whereas  of  old  and  in  his  day  the 
sense  of  dependence  on  nature,  that  is  to  say  on  the  gods, 
was  habitual  and  daily,  now  through  the  growth  of  the 
[178] 


WORDSWORTH 
world,  that  dependence  is  no  longer  felt  as  at  all  super- 
natural; the  harvest  ripens  or  fails,  but  we  have  little 
thought  of  the  gods  therewith;  and,  in  fact,  the  habitual 
sense  of  the  dependence  of  our  own  bodies  on  the  favour 
of  heaven  is  a  vanishing  quality.  It  is  a  consequence  of 
this  that  our  life  necessarily  grows  more  purely  spiritual, 
and  such  dependence  on  the  divine  as  is  recognized  is  a 
dependence  of  the  soul  itself,  felt  in  the  contemplative 
mind  and  much  more  in  the  life  of  the  affections.  Na- 
ture as  an  intermediary  between  God  and  man  has  lost 
in  importance,  through  the  growth  and  spread  of  the 
idea  of  the  order  obtaining  in  nature  as  against  the  idea 
of  nature  as  a  series  of  special  providences  in  relation  to 
our  daily  lives.  I  count  this  loss  as  a  gain,  inasmuch  as  it 
throws  the  soul  back  on  its  own  higher  nature  and  essen- 
tial life.  But  there  is  another  change.  Of  old  the  thought 
was  of  the  earth  and  toil  upon  it;  that  was  nature;  now 
our  thought  of  nature  is  of  a  force,  which  we  subdue.  It 
has  come  about  through  the  extraordinary  development 
of  mechanical  skill.  Of  old  we  taught  the  winds  to  waft 
our  ships,  and  the  waters  to  drive  our  mills ;  but  now  — 
to  take  the  significant  example  —  we  have  enslaved  the 
lightning.  Nature  has  become  in  our  thoughts  a  Cali- 
ban reduced  to  civility  by  being  put  in  bonds.  I  have 
much  sympathy  with  theoretic  science;  with  the  mind's 
view  of  the  world  —  and  I  recognize  its  noble  results, 
[179] 


THE  TORCH 
not  only  in  philosophic  thought,  but  in  much  impres' 
sionistic  art.  But  I  have  all  of  a  poet's  impatience  of  ap- 
pUed  science.  I  remember  hearing  a  story  years  ago  of  a 
snail  who  got  mounted  on  a  tortoise:  "My!"  he  said, 
"how  the  grass  whistles  by!"  And  when  I  hear  people 
in  trolley-cars  talk  of  riding  on  the  wings  of  the  lightning 
I  think  of  the  snail.  What  is  the  speed  of  the  lightning  to 
the  swiftness  of  the  "wings  of  meditation  and  the 
thoughts  of  love  "  that  the  soul  of  Hamlet  knew  ?  Is  Ni- 
agara essentially  an  electric-lighting  plant  ?  I  have  heard 
men  of  science  —  the  same  men  who  told  me  that 
Homer  never  did  anything  of  half  the  importance  of  a 
theorem  in  mechanics  —  I  have  heard  them  sneer  at  the 
old  Greek  idea  that  man  was  the  centre  of  the  universe 
—  the  Christian  idea  that  Milton  had  —  the  idea  of 
George  Herbert : 

"Man  is  one  world. 
And  hath  another  to  attend  him:  —  " 

this  idea  was  man's  foolish  egoism.  But  is  it  a  larger 
idea  to  think  of  nature  as  man's  Jack-at-all-trades  ? 
For  me,  I  must  say,  science  —  applied  science  —  de- 
grades the  conception  of  nature  in  narrowing  it  to  the 
grooves  of  material  use.  Yet  this  is,  in  general,  our  mod- 
em idea  —  the  prevailing  idea  —  of  nature.  What  poem 
of  recent  years  has  been  more  acclaimed  than  that  in 
[180] 


WORDSWORTH 
which  a  Scotch  Presbyterian  engineer  found  in  his  en- 
gine the  idea  of  God  ?  It  is  well  that  he  should  find  the 
idea  there,  as  it  was  well  in  the  eighteenth  century  that 
the  clock-maker  should  find  his  idea  of  God  as  a  clock- 
maker,  since  that  was  the  measure  of  his  knowledge  of 
God;  but,  for  all  that,  the  narrowing  influence  of  these 
scientific  conceptions  is  no  less.  Hence  it  is  that  we  fall 
into  the  commonest  error  of  men  —  the  error  of  per- 
spective, a  wrong  sense  of  the  proportion  of  things.  Our 
eyes  are  fixed  on  the  material  uses  of  nature,  and  he  is 
great  among  us  who  sets  her  to  some  new  task  in  cheap- 
ening steel  or  facilitating  transportation.  Now  in  Words- 
worth there  is  nothing  of  this;  he  hardly  notices,  indeed, 
what  to  Virgil  was  so  important,  her  co-operation  in 
agriculture  and  the  life  of  the  farm.  Wordsworth  restores 
to  us  the  spiritual  use  of  nature;  and  the  spiritual  use 
that  man  makes  of  the  world  is  the  really  important 
thing.  With  that  primitive  mind  of  his,  he  realizes  at 
once  the  closeness  with  which  we  are  cradled  in  nature, 
the  universality  of  her  life  round  about  us : 

He  laid  us  as  we  lay  at  birth 
On  tlie  cool  flowery  lap  of  earth; 
Smiles  broke  from  us  and  we  had  ease. 
The  hills  were  round  us,  and  the  breeze 
Went  oer  the  sunlit  fields  again: 
Our  foreheads  felt  the  wind  and  rain." 
[181] 


THE  TORCH 
For  the  least  conscious,  for  the  semi-vital  among  men, 
nature  is  the  blanket  of  God  round  about  them;  for  the 
most  spiritually-minded,  nature  is  the  ante-room  to  His 
presence,  and  our  way  to  higher  life.  In  poem  after 
poem  Wordsworth  illustrates  all  modes  of  approach  by 
which  on  the  threshold  of  nature  the  soul  grows  con- 
scious of  itself;  especially  he  shows  how  nature  feeds  the 
mind  with  beauty  through  the  senses: 

"Sensations  sweet 
Felt  in  the  blood  and  felt  along  the  heart 
And  passing  even  into  my  purer  mind  ;  '* 

and  thus  is  a  chief  minister  to  us  in  that  building  of  our 
own  world  —  physical,  emotional,  moral  —  each  one  of 
us  for  himself,  which  is  the  necessary  task  of  all.  It  is  not 
a  machine  that  we  have  to  make,  to  hew  wood  and  draw 
water  for  us,  and  carry  us  from  place  to  place  at  elec- 
trical speed ;  it  is  a  world  that  we  have  to  build  for  our 
souls  to  live  in  and  grow  through,  a  world  of  happy 
memory,  of  pure  hope,  of  daily  beauty,  the  world  of  our 
habitual  selves,  and  Wordsworth  shows  what  elements 
for  such  a  world  of  the  soul  —  for  such  a  daily  self  — 
nature  provides  and  what  is  the  art  of  its  construction. 
To  Wordsworth,  however,  no  more  than  to  other  poets 
was  nature  the  whole  Ufe :  and  even  to  him,  if  you  stop 
to  think  about  it,  nature  has  no  life  of  her  own,  but  is 
[182] 


WORDSWORTH 
only  one  mode  of  the  soul's  existence  and  self-con- 
sciousness. He  came  back  at  last,  as  all  do,  to  man  as 
the  only  subject  that  finally  interests  men.  I  said  that  in 
nature  he  found  only  the  presence,  but  not  the  voice,  of 
God.  The  voice  of  God  he  found  in  his  own  bosom,  in 
conscience,  in  duty,  as  you  remember  in  his  ode  to  duty 
he  begins: 

"  Stem  daughter  of  the  voice  of  God, 
O  duty  —  if  thai  name  thou  love  —  " 

The  second  great  root  of  his  poetry  is  character  — 
moral  character,  and  in  defining  and  enforcing  its  ideals 
none  of  our  poets  is  more  truly  English,  more  truly  of 
the  race  to  which  character  is  always  an  engrossing  and 
primary  interest.  In  the  poem,  called  "The  Happy 
Warrior  "  he  deUneated  both  the  public  and  private  as- 
pects of  character,  as  conceived  by  the  English,  with  a 
felicity  of  phrase  and  solidity  of  thought,  and  also  with 
eloquent  distinction,  such  as  to  place  the  poem  apart  by 
itself  as  unique  in  our  literature.  The  better  example, 
however,  for  my  purposes,  is  the  portrait  of  a  woman  — 
*'  She  was  a  phantom  of  delight, "  —  the  companion-piece 
to  that  I  have  already  read  —  in  which  he  begins  from 
the  things  of  sense,  and  goes  on,  in  the  way  I  have  de- 
scribed, to  the  moral,  and  finally  to  the  spiritual  sphere. 
Here  the  lyric  method  of  poetry  is  again  illustrated  — 
[183] 


THE  TORCH 

how,  starting  from  the  external  world  it  becomes  at  last 
purely  internal  —  which  is  the  method,  as  you  recognize, 
of  all  poetical  life  in  essence.  Apart  from  abstract  char- 
acter, the  sphere  of  human  life  which  Wordsworth  most 
attended  to  was  of  course  that  humble  life  of  the  poor 
in  which  he  was  most  interested  because  they  were  near 
to  the  soil,  and,  as  he  thought,  nearer  on  that  account  to 
nature's  hand.  It  is,  however,  a  transparent  error  to 
think  of  dalesmen  and  shepherds  as  nearer  to  nature  in 
this  sense;  it  is  one  of  the  fallacies  of  civilized  life;  for 
Wordsworth  himself  is  the  shining  example  how  much 
more,  in  both  intimacy  and  fullness,  was  his  life  with 
nature  than  that  of  any  other  in  his  generation.  Nature 
is  not  to  be  thought  of  as  a  kind  of  agricultural  school 
education,  a  thing  for  children  and  dalesmen;  but  the 
same  rule  that  holds  of  all  the  gift  of  life  holds  here,  that 
the  beneficence,  the  splendour  and  mystery  of  the  gift,  in- 
creases with  the  power  of  him  who  receives  it.  Words- 
worth was  the  true  and  faithful  poet  of  lowly  lives,  and 
as  such  he  is  endeared  to  humanity;  he  was  the  second 
great  democratic  poet,  succeeding  Burns,  from  whom  he 
learned  to  be  such,  as  he  says;  but  he  comes  more  di- 
rectly and  intimately  into  our  own  lives  through  his  per- 
sonal force  —  through  his  own  experience  of  what  nature 
meant  to  him. 

In  what  sense,  then,  is  Wordsworth  a  race-exponent  ? 
[184] 


WORDSWORTH 
Principally  and  distinctively  in  the  fact  that  he  sums  up, 
illustrates,  and  amplifies  the  experience  of  the  race  in  its 
direct  relation  to  nature.  With  that  primitive  mind  on 
which  I  have  dwelt,  he  spanned  the  difference  between 
the  eariiest  and  the  latest  thought  of  the  race;  to  liim,  in 
certain  moods,  nature  was  animated  with  a  life  like  our 
own,  he  believed  it  enjoyed  its  life  as  we  do,  and  this  is 
primeval  belief;  at  the  other  end  of  progress  he  was  as 
pantheistic  as  he  was  animistic  here,  and  saw  nature 
only  as  another  form  of  divine  being.  Thus  he  contem- 
plated nature  almost  as  the  savage  and  almost  as  the 
philosopher,  and  commanded  the  whole  scope  of  hu- 
man thought  with  relation  thereto.  He  presented  nature 
through  this  wide  range  as  a  discipline  of  the  soul  in  its 
development;  it  is,  first,  a  discipline  in  beauty,  in  the 
power  to  see  and  appreciate  loveliness,  and  he  especially 
values  this  as  a  means  of  building  up  a  beautiful  mem- 
ory —  perhaps  the  chief  consolation  of  advancing  life. 
So,  in  the  lines  to  the  "  Highland  Girl,  he  writes:  " 

"  In  spots  like  these  it  is  we  prize 
Our  memory;  feel  that  she  hath  eyes:" 

So  he  wrote  again  of  that  inward  eye 

"  Which  is  the  bliss  of  solitude"  — 

and  illustrates  it  by  the  vision  of  the  daffodils ;  and  in  the 
same  spirit  counsels  his  sister: 
[185] 


THE  TORCH 

"  Thy  mind 
Shall  be  a  mansion  for  all  lovely  forms. 
Thy  memory  be  as  a  dwelling  place 
For  all  sweet  sounds  and  harmonies." 

Secondly,  it  is  a  discipline  of  the  emotions,  which  nature 
evokes  and  exercises.  The  emotion  is  represented,  nearly 
always  I  think,  as  that  reverberation  of  feeling  which  I 
spoke  of.  Perhaps  its  most  spiritualized  example  is  in 
Tennyson : 

"  Tears,  idle  tears:  I  know  not  wlmt  they  mean. 
Tears  from,  the  depth  of  some  divine  despair. 
Rise  in  the  heart,  and  gather  to  the  eyes 
In  looking  on  the  happy  autumn  fields. 
And  thinking  of  the  days  that  are  no  more." 

The  reverberation  of  emotion,  here,  is  the  poem.  It  is 
this  reverberation,  truly  speaking,  which  Wordsworth 
interprets  as  the  sense  of  the  divine  presence  in  nature : 

"  A  presence  that  disturbs  me  with  the  joy 
Of  elevated  thoughts"  — 

Thirdly,  it  is  a  discipline  of  the  moral  sense.  Here,  per- 
haps, we  have  most  difficulty  in  going  along  with  Words- 
worth. When  he  says: 

"  One  impulse  from  a  vernal  wood 
May  teach  you  more  of  man. 
Of  moral  evil  and  of  good 
Than  all  the  sages  can:  " 
[186] 


WOEDSYv'OHTn 
when  he  writes  of  himself  as 

"Well  pleased  to  recognize 
In  nature,  and  the  language  of  the  sense. 
The  anchor  of  my  purest  thoughts,  the  nurse. 
The  guide,  the  guardian  of  my  heart,  and  soul 
Of  all  my  moral  being"  — 

we  do  not  readily  understand  his  meaning.  Yet  if  you  rec- 
ollect his  life,  as  his  poems  disclose  it  like  a  series  of  an- 
ecdotes of  what  happened  to  him,  you  see  not  only  how 
often  he  returned  from  his  rambles  in  the  hills  with  a 
strengthened  moral  mind  in  consequence  of  some  lesson 
he  may  have  derived  from  some  flower  or  cloud,  which 
spelled  out  for  him  in  an  image  of  beauty  his  secret 
thought,  or  set  up  by  an  initial  impulse  that  train  of  feel- 
ing which  resulted  in  meditative  moral  thought,  but  how 
much  more  often  he  returned  so  strengthened  by  the 
sight  of  some  human  incident,  history  or  character  which 
to  him  wore  the  aspect  of  a  fact  of  nature;  for  he  did  not 
discriminate  between  nature  and  its  operation  in  the 
lives  of  common  folk;  all  life  is  necessarily  moral,  and 
nature  by  passing  influentially  into  the  lives  of  his  dales- 
men and  shepherds  became  thereby  moral  in  essence; 
nature  exceeded  its  bounds  here,  in  the  moral  sphere, 
just  as  in  becoming  divine  it  exceeded  its  bounds  in  the 
spiritual  sphere.  Wordsworth  was  no  pantheist;  he  had 
the  dews  of  baptism  upon  him  and  remained  in  the  pews 
[187] 


THE  TORCH 
of  the  establishment  all  his  life;  but,  both  in  his  panthe- 
istic verse,  and  in  his  verse  ascribing  moral  wisdom  to 
nature,  he  sincerely  described  certain  experiences  of  his 
own  in  which  he  derived  religious  emotion  and  moral 
strengthening  and  enlightenment  through  his  contact 
with  nature  and  the  natural  lives  of  his  neighbours  on  the 
moors  and  the  hills.  Emotion  was  always  mainly  fed  in 
him,  imaginatively,  from  the  forms  of  nature;  and  the 
strengthening  of  emotion,  and  the  habit  of  it,  necessar- 
ily builds  up  the  moral  nature  of  man  —  it  is  the  mode 
of  its  nurture.  I  am  accustomed  to  say  that  Keats  is  a 
poet  to  be  young  with,  and  that  Wordsworth  is  a  poet  to 
grow  old  with.  The  element  of  habit  counts  for  much  in 
such  communion  with  nature  as  Wordsworth  illustrates ; 
for  it  is  not  any  flash  of  thought  he  brings,  any  revela- 
tion of  emotional  power  as  a  sudden  discovery  of  the 
soul;  the  power  of  nature  has  begun  to  steal  upon  the 
boy,  in  his  skating  or  his  nutting,  or  his  whistling  to  the 
owls,  and  thereafter  it  only  grows.  Meditation,  too,  is  a 
large  element  in  the  habit  Wordsworth  establishes  to- 
ward nature,  and  memory,  as  we  have  seen,  bears  a  part 
in  it.  It  follows  that,  not  only  is  his  power  over  his  read- 
ers cumulative  with  years,  but  his  attitude  toward  na- 
ture must  have  the  force  of  habit  with  us  before  it  can 
render  to  us  what  it  rendered  to  him.  With  the  formation 
of  this  habit  comes  that  consoling  power  which  lovers 
[188] 


WORDSWORTH 
of  Wordsworth  find  in  his  verse,  what  Arnold  called  the 
healing  power  of  nature.  I  do  not  myself  see  any  healing 
power  of  nature  in  such  instances  as  Michael,  or  Ruth, 
of  the  affliction  of  Margaret;  there  are  wounds  which  na- 
ture cannot  heal,  and  Wordsworth  was  sensible  of  this : 
he  did  not,  as  Arnold  says  he  did,  look  on  "the  cloud  of 
mortal  destiny  "  and  put  it  by;  no  English  poet  can.  But  it 
is  true  that  in  the  life-long  appeal  that  Wordsworth's 
verse  makes  especially  to  the  sober  and  aging  mind  by 
virtue  of  its  equable  temper,  its  moral  strength,  its 
simple  human  breadth  of  sympathy,  as  well  as  by  its  su- 
preme rendering  of  the  spiritual  uses  of  nature  in  our 
daily  lives,  its  tranquilhzing  power  is  also  a  main  source 
of  its  hold  on  the  general  heart. 

Such,  in  its  phases,  is  the  discipline  of  nature  for  the 
soul  as  Wordsworth  presents  it.  The  poetic  act,  as  I  have 
said,  is  the  going  out  of  the  soul.  If  we  do  not  fare  forth 
on  any  quest  of  the  old  knightly  days,  yet  all  life  consists 
in  such  a  faring  forth,  in  going  out  of  ourselves  into 
some  larger  world,  practically  into  a  club  or  a  church  or 
a  college  or  a  political  party  or  a  nation  —  in  litera- 
ture it  consists  in  going  out  into  the  race-mind,  in  any 
or  all  its  forms,  into  the  life  of  the  race  as  an  idealized 
past,  or  as  a  part  of  present  nature  or  present  humanity. 
I  have  illustrated,  hitherto,  the  imaginative  or  spiritual 
forms  of  history,  and  to-night  the  imaginative  or  spiritual 

[189] 


THE  TORCH 
forms  of  nature,  in  either  of  which  the  soul  may  take  its 
course  in  the  larger  life,  and  going  out  of  itself  find  the 
freedom  of  the  universe  its  own  —  in  beauty,  reason, 
liberty,  righteousness,  love  —  the  ideal  elements  to 
which  all  paths,  whether  of  history  or  nature,  lead,  when 
imagination  is  the  guide.  It  remains  only  to  illustrate  the 
same  general  theory  by  the  example  of  the  poet  who 
dealt  most  powerfully  with  human  life  as  a  thing  of  the 
present  as  Wordsworth  dealt  most  powerfully  with 
nature  in  the  same  way.  That  is  the  next,  and  final, 
lecture. 


[190] 


The  Torch 

VIII 


SHELLEY 


In  lecturing  the  other  night  on  Wordsworth  I  did  not  re- 
fer to  his  best-known  verses,  the  half-dozen  lines  which 
have  more  luminousness  of  language,  I  think,  than  any 
other  English  words: 

"  Our  birth  is  but  a  sleep  and  a  forgetting: 
The  soul  that  rises  with  us,  our  life's  star. 
Hath  had  elsewhere  its  setting. 

And  Cometh  from  afar; 
Not  in  entire  forgetfulness. 
And  not  in  utter  nakedness. 
But  trailing  clouds  of  glory  do  we  come 
From  God,  who  is  our  home.  " 

■* Magnificent  poetry,"  said  John  Stuart  Mill,  "but 
very  bad  philosophy.  "  However  that  may  be,  the  lines 
express  the  idea,  natural  to  all  of  us,  that  we  are  in  some 
sense  heirs  of  past  glory.  We  are  accustomed  to  think  of 
fieredity,  as  something  founded  as  it  were  in  past  time 
[193] 


THE  TORCH 
under  the  operation  of  the  laws  of  natural  selection,  and 
stored  in  us  physically;  and  embryologists  say  that  the 
long  series  of  physical  changes,  in  consequence  of  which 
man  finally  became  in  his  body  the  lord  of  living  crea- 
tures, is  reflected  with  great  rapidity  in  the  human  em- 
bryo, so  that  when  the  body  is  bom  it  has  in  fact  passed 
through  the  entire  race-history  in  a  physical  sense.  We 
are  no  sooner  bom,  however,  than  we  enter  at  once  on  a 
new  period  of  heredity,  and  acquire  also  with  great  ra- 
pidity the  mental  and  moral  powers  which  originally 
arose  slowly  in  the  race  through  long  ages  of  growth, 
and  we  become  civilized  men  by  thus  appropriating 
swiftly  funds  of  knowledge  and  habits  of  thinking,  feel- 
ing and  acting ;  this  is  the  education  which  makes  a  man 
contemporary  with  his  time,  and  perhaps  it  normally 
ends  in  the  fact,  for  most  men,  that  he  does  what  is  ex- 
pected of  him,  and  also  feels  and  thinks  what  is  ex- 
pected of  him.  That  is  the  conventional,  well  brought 
up,  civilized  man. 

There  is  a  third  sphere  of  heredity,  with  which  these 
lectures  have  been  concerned,  in  which  it  is  more  a  mat- 
ter of  choice,  of  temperament  and  vitality,  whether  a 
man  will  avail  himself  of  it,  and  appreciate  it.  Men, 
generally  speaking,  are  but  dimly  aware  of  their  powers 
and  capacities  outside  of  the  practical  sphere;  in  our 
growing  years  we  require  aid  in  discovering  these  ca- 
[194] 


SHELLEY 
pacities  and  exercising  these  powers;  we  require,  as  it 
were,  some  introduction  to  ourselves,  some  encourage- 
ment to  believe  we  really  are  the  power  of  man  that  we 
are,  and  some  training  in  finding  out  vitally  what  that 
power  of  man  in  us  is.  This  is  our  use  —  the  earliest  — 
of  literature;  it  interprets  us  to  ourselves.  It  does  this  by 
fixing  our  attention  on  some  things  that  we  might  not 
have  noticed  —  on  natural  things  of  beauty,  and  by  pro- 
viding appropriate  thoughts  and  stimulating  delightful 
emotion  in  respect  to  these  things;  or  it  helps  us  by 
arousing  feeling  for  the  first  time,  perhaps,  with  regard 
to  some  part  of  life,  and  by  giving  noble  expression  to 
such  new  feeling  or  to  some  emotion  hitherto  vague  and 
indeterminate  in  our  bosom ;  and  it  especially  aids  us  by 
giving  play  to  our  forces  in  an  imaginary  world,  where 
both  thought  and  feeling  may  have  a  career  which 
would  be  impossible  to  us  in  our  narrow  world  of  fact. 
The  poverty  of  not  only  the  young,  but  of  most  men,  in 
spiritual  experience,  is  probably  far  greater  than  men 
of  maturity  and  culture  readily  conceive;  it  is  possible 
that  the  forms  of  the  church  even  far  exceed  the  capacity 
of  the  people  to  interpret  them,  just  as  Dante,  or  any 
high  work  of  imagination  would.  The  poets  interpret 
what  is  forming  in  us,  and  offer  new  objects  of  contem- 
plation and  emotion  in  the  imaginary  world ;  they  go  but 
a  little  way  before  us,  for  they  can  be  read  and  under- 
[195] 


THE  TORCH 

stood  only  by  the  light  of  our  own  experience;  but, 
hand  by  hand,  one  leads  us  to  another  till  we  are  in  the 
presence  of  the  greatest.  I  do  not  know  whether  Shaks- 
pere  unlocked  his  heart,  as  Wordsworth  said,  with  the 
key  of  the  sonnet;  but  I  know  hterature  is  the  key  which 
unlocks  our  own  bosoms  to  ourselves ;  though,  in  con- 
sequence of  that  respect  for  the  individual  life  of  the 
soul,  which  is  one  of  the  mysterious  marks  of  man's 
nature,  no  hand  but  our  own  can  turn  the  lock  in  its 
wards.  What  I  described  the  other  night  as  the  poetic 
act  —  the  going  forth  of  the  soul  —  must  be  the  act  of 
the  man  himself;  but  it  is  through  literature  that  the 
paths  make  out  —  the  highways  trodden  by  many  feet. 
As  you  go  out  on  these  great  highways  of  the  soul, 
in  Dante,  in  Shakspere,  in  Goethe,  a  strange  thing  will 
happen  to  you:  it  will  seem,  in  the  variety  of  new  ideas, 
in  the  flood  of  new  feeling  arising  in  you,  that  you  are 
changed  within,  that  you  have  found  almost  a  new  self. 
I  remember  once  when  I  was  studying  the  now  lost  art 
of  wood-engraving,  looking  as  I  was  at  hundreds  of 
woodcuts  constantly,  it  happened  that  when  I  went  out 
to  walk,  I  saw  woodcuts  in  the  landscape;  my  eye  hav- 
ing grown  accustomed  to  certain  line  and  form-arrange- 
ments of  an  artistic  sort,  naturally  picked  out  of  the  gen- 
eral landscape  such  arrangements,  as  you  make  pic- 
tures in  the  fire;  that  is  to  say,  my  eye,  dwelling  on  this 
[196] 


SHELLEY 
feature  and  neglecting  that,  composed  the  landscape, 
made  a  picture  of  it.  Now  that  is  the  constant  act  of  life. 
The  human  soul  finds  the  world  a  heterogeneous  mass 
of  impressions;  and  it  attends  to  certain  things,  and 
neglects  others,  and  composes  its  picture  of  life  that 
way;  prefers  certain  memories,  certain  desires,  and  so 
builds  its  own  world,  as  I  have  constantly  said.  It 
applies  this  method  of  composition  even  to  itself.  You 
read  Byron,  and  before  you  know  it  you  see 
yourself  in  Byron's  ways,  you  pick  out  and  favour 
your  Byronic  traits,  you  find  you  are  Byron  in  your 
self-portrait;  or  you  read  Thackeray  and  find  yourself 
in  "Arthur  Pendennis; "  or,  on  the  broader  scale,  you 
read  Greek  a  good  deal,  Greek  history  and  art  as  well 
as  literature,  and  you  find  you  see  the  world  as  a  Greek 
world  —  or,  again,  as  a  French  world,  as  the  case 
may  be.  The  change  is  a  great  one,  amounting  almost  to 
the  discovery  of  a  new  world  and  yourself  a  new  self  in  it. 
So,  in  Goethe's  life,  the  Italian  journey  and  the  study  of 
the  antique  made  a  new  and  greater  Goethe  of  him.  So 
the  mind  of  Milton,  originally  English,  was  Hebraized, 
Hellenized  and  Italianized.  The  discovery  of  the  new 
self  may  be  often  repeated,  and  each  new  self  enters  into 
and  blends  with  the  old  selves,  and  makes  your  personal- 
ity, or,  at  least,  gives  form  to  it.  So  the  young  Roman 
poet  was  Homer  and  Lucretius  and  the  Alexandrians, 
[197] 


THE  TORCH 
and  is  Virgil;  so  the  young  Italian  was  Virgil,  and  is 
Dante;  so  the  young  Englishman  was  Theocritus,  was 
Catallus,  was  Keats,  and  is  Tennyson.  What  is  involved, 
you  see,  is  a  kind  of  mental  embryology;  just  as  the  phy- 
sical man  sums  up  rapidly  the  age-long  change  from  the 
lowest  to  the  highest  creature-life,  just  as  the  convention- 
al man  sums  up  in  the  same  way  the  ages  from  barbar- 
ism to  civilization  and  spans  them  in  his  education,  so 
here  the  soul  in  its  highest  life  —  that  free  soul  that  I 
have  spoken  of  —  sums  up  and  spans  the  difference  be- 
tween the  ordinary  man  and  the  highest  culture  the  race 
has  ever  known,  and  now  holds  in  his  own  spirit  that  ac- 
cumulation, that  power  of  man,  which  (by  heredity  en- 
tered into  of  his  own  choice)  makes  him  an  heir  of  past 
gloiy  —  for  the  splendour,  the  leading  light,  the  birth- 
light  of  which  Wordsworth's  verse  is  none  too  extrava- 
gant an  expression. 

Literature,  then,  is  the  key  to  your  own  hearts;  and 
going  out  with  the  poets  you  slowly  or  swiftly  evolve  new 
life  after  new  life,  and  enter  partially  or  fully  on  that 
race-inheritance  which  is  not  the  less  real  and  sure  be- 
cause you  must  reach  out  your  hand  and  take  it  instead 
of  having  it  stored  in  your  nerves  and  senses  at  birth; 
predispositions  to  appropriate  it  are  stored  even  there, 
but  it  is  a  thing  of  the  spirit  and  must  be  gathered  by  the 
spirit  itself.  You  will,  perhaps,  pardon  one  word  of 
[198] 


SHELLEY 
warning.  This  process  that  I  have  described  is  a  vital 
process,  a  thing  of  hfe,  and  it  must  be  real.  There  is  al- 
ways at  work  that  selective  principle  by  virtue  of  which 
you  compose  life  in  the  ways  most  natural  to  you.  It  may 
well  happen  that  some  great  author  does  not  appeal  to 
you,  and  the  reason  is  that  you  have  not  in  yourself  the 
experience  to  read  him  by;  moreover,  being  a  process  of 
life,  this  process  is  one  of  joy,  and  if  any  author,  no  matter 
how  great,  does  not  give  you  pleasure,  the  process  is  not 
taking  place.  Therefore,  do  not  read  books  that,  after  a 
fair  trial,  give  no  pleasure;  do  not  read  books  that  are 
too  old,  too  far  in  advance  of  you.  If  they  are  really  great, 
they  will  come  in  time;  but  if,  for  example,  Dante's 
"  Inferno  "  is  a  weary  place  to  your  feet  and  your  soul 
feels  its  thousand  contaminations,  do  not  stay  in  such  a 
place;  and  so  of  all  other  books  with  names  of  awe.  Hon- 
esty is  nowhere  more  essential  than  in  literary  study; 
hypocrisy,  there,  may  have  terrible  penalties,  not  merely 
in  foolishness,  but  in  misfortune;  and  to  lie  to  oneself 
about  oneself  is  the  most  fatal  lie.  The  stages  of  life 
must  be  taken  in  their  order;  but  finally  you  will  dis- 
cover the  blessed  fact  that  the  world  of  literature  is  one 
of  diminishing  books  —  since  the  greater  are  found  to 
contain  the  less,  for  which  reason  time  itself  sifts  the 
relics  of  the  past  and  leaves  at  last  only  a  Homer  for 
centuries  of  early  Greece,  a  Dante  for  his  entire  age,  a 
[199] 


THE  TORCH 

Milton  for  a  whole  system  of  thought.  To  understand 
and  appreciate  such  great  writers  is  the  goal;  but  the 
way  is  by  making  honest  use  of  the  authors  that  appeal 
to  us  in  the  most  living  ways.  The  process  that  I  have 
described  is  the  one  by  which  all  men  advance  and  come 
into  their  own  —  men  of  genius  no  less  than  others :  for  I 
cannot  too  often  repeat  the  fundamental  truth  that  the 
nature  and  power  of  the  soul,  its  habits,  its  laws  and 
growth,  are  the  same  in  all  men;  it  sometimes  happens 
that  a  man  who  goes  through  the  process  of  this  high 
spiritual  life,  becoming  more  and  more  deeply,  vari- 
ously and  potently  human,  developing  this  power  of 
man  in  him,  has  also  a  passion  for  accomplishment  — 
and  that  is  one  of  the  marks  of  a  man  of  genius.  Shelley 
was  such  a  man;  and  I  desire  to  present  him,  as  a  man 
with  a  passion  for  accomplishment,  but  also  as  an  extra- 
ordinarily good  illustration  of  the  mode  in  which  a  man, 
through  literature,  evolves  the  highest  self  of  which 
mankind  is  capable,  summing  up  in  his  own  soul  the 
final  results  and  forward  hopes  of  the  race. 

At  the  outset  let  me  guard  against  a  common  mis- 
conception. Shelley  is  too  often  thought  of  as  having 
something  effeminate  in  his  nature.  This  is  due,  in  great 
part,  to  his  portrait  which  with  all  its  beauty,  gives  an 
impression  of  softness,  dreaminess  and  languour;  in  it 
there  is  little  characteristically  masculine.  It  is  also  due, 
[200] 


SHELLEY 
in  some  measure,  to  the  preponderance  of  feeling  over 
thought  in  his  verse,  of  imagery  over  idea,  and  in  general 
of  atmosphere  over  form;  his  is  what  we  may  call  a 
colour-mind.  The  misconception  of  Shelley  to  which  I 
refer  is  most  boldly  stated  by  Matthew  Arnold,  who 
called  him  an  "ineffectual  angel  beating  his  beautiful 
wings  in  the  void.  "  Now  nothing  could  be  said  of  Shel- 
ley that  is  more  wrong  than  that.  Shelley  was  a  high- 
spirited,  imaginative  child;  he  was  a  resolute  Eton  boy 
—  who  would  not  fag,  you  remember,  and  being  always 
persistent  in  rebellion,  carried  his  point;  he  rode,  and 
shot  the  covers  in  his  younger  days,  and  was  a  good 
pistol-shot,  all  his  life  delighting  in  the  practice.  He  was  a 
very  practical  man,  in  business  affairs,  after  he  came  of 
age  and  had  learned  something  of  human  nature.  He 
was  the  only  man  who  could  handle  Byron  with  tact  and 
reason.  He  made  a  very  good  will.  In  fact,  his  practical 
instinct  developed  equally  with  his  other  qualities. 
Neither  was  he  a  moping  poet.  He  had  fits  of  high 
spirits  —  of  gaiety;  he  used  habitually  to  sing  to  him- 
self going  about  the  house.  As  boy  and  man,  both,  he 
was  typically  English,  aristocratically  gentle  in  all  his 
ways  and  behaviour,  only  nervous,  impulsive,  strong, 
wilful,  quick  to  see,  quick  to  respond  —  a  very  deter- 
mined and  active  person;  and,  in  fact,  manly  to  the  full 
limit  of  Enghsh  manhood.  Perhaps  there  is  always  some- 
[201  ] 


THE  TORCH 
thing  feminine  in  poetic  beauty  —  the  expression  that 
we  see  typically  in  the  pictures  of  St.  John  the  Beloved ; 
but,  apart  from  that  light  on  his  face  and  that  grace  in 
all  his  ways,  Shelley  was  as  manly  a  man  as  they  ever 
make  in  England. 

This  being  premised,  then,  one  reason  why  Shelley  is 
so  good  an  illustration  of  the  development  of  a  modern 
soul  is  the  fact  that  the  record  with  respect  to  him  is  so 
complete.  No  human  life,  with  the  exception  possibly  of 
Lincoln's,  has  been  so  entirely  exposed  to  our  knowl- 
edge, from  his  earliest  days:  it  seems  as  if  nothing  of 
him  could  ever  die,  no  matter  how  slight,  boyish  and 
trivial  it  might  be.  Thus  it  comes  about  that  we  see  his 
forming  mind  in  its  first  crudities.  He  was  an  eager  boy, 
alive,  awake,  interested,  voracious,  pressing  against  the 
barrier  of  life  for  his  career.  He  began  with  a  taste  for 
the  most  extravagant,  melodramatic  romance  —  what 
was  then  known  as  the  German  tale  of  wonder,  in  which 
the  young  Sir  Walter  Scott  had  also  taken  much  in- 
terest; it  was  what  we  should  describe  as  a  dime-novel 
taste,  except  that  its  characters  were  monks  and  nuns 
and  alchemists  and  wandering  Jews;  Shelley  himself 
wrote  two  romances  and  many  short  and  one  long  poem 
of  this  sort  by  the  time  he  was  sixteen  years  old,  and 
published  them  moreover.  He  was  always  impatient, 
quick  to  act,  to  be  doing  something.  His  imagination 
[202] 


SHELLEY 
was  first  fed  by  this  sensationalism,  and  it  was  also  scien- 
tifically excited  by  the  spectacular  side  of  chemical  ex- 
periments ;  and  then  he  began  to  think  —  at  first  it  was 
politics  —  such  things  as  the  freedom  of  the  press,  the 
rights  of  Catholics,  reform;  or  it  was  morals  —  such 
things  as  property,  marriage;  or  it  was  metaphysics  — 
such  things  as  Locke's  sensational  philosophy,  and  the 
ideas  of  the  age.  Radical  ideas  in  all  their  imperfection 
of  newness  filled  his  mind,  reform  took  hold  of  him.  He 
went  to  Ireland  to  make  speeches,  and  made  them,  dis- 
tributed tracts,  subscribed  to  funds,  helped  men  who 
were  prosecuted,  especially  editors,  got  himself  put 
under  observation  as  a  dangerous  character;  and  not  yet 
twenty-one  years  old. 

There  was  then  little  sign  of  poetic  genius  in  him;  he 
had  always  written  verses,  of  course,  but  there  is  no  line 
of  his  early  writing  that  indicates  any  talent  even  for 
good  verse.  But  his  mind  had  dipped  in  life,  in  thought, 
in  action,  and  was  impregnated  with  all  kinds  of  power; 
especially  his  mind  had  dipped  in  ideas  —  the  idea  of 
the  perfectibility  of  mankind,  of  experimental  method  in 
science,  of  immediate  social  change  in  England  in  such 
fundamental  things  as  wealth  and  marriage.  He  was 
always  a  person  of  convictions  rather  than  opinions ;  he 
wanted  to  live  his  thoughts,  and  together  with  his  great 
causes  he  carried  about  a  full  assortment  of  minor  mat- 
[203] 


THE  TORCH 
ters,  such  as  vegetarianism,  for  example.  In  a  word,  he 
began  as  a  Reformer,  and  he  was  as  complete  an  in- 
stance of  the  type  as  ever  walked  even  these  streets  of 
Boston.  But  he  found  language  more  generally  useful 
than  action  in  standing  forth  for  his  ideas;  and  great 
command  of  language  having  already  accrued  to  him 
through  the  incessant  hammering  of  his  brains  on  these 
ideas,  making  them  malleable  and  portable  and  efficient 
for  human  use,  there  came  to  him  also  that  intenser 
power  of  language,  that  passion  of  expression  which  finds 
its  element  in  noble  cadences  and  vital  images  of  poetry 
as  naturally  as  a  bird  flies  in  the  air.  Yet  the  passage 
from  the  power  of  prose  to  the  power  of  poetry  in 
Shelley  is  not  a  very  marked  advance.  What  he  dis- 
covered, in  writing  "  Queen  Mab, "  his  first  real  poem, 
was  the  opportunity  that  poetry  gives  for  unfolding 
a  great  deal  of  matter  with  logical  clearness  and 
eloquent  effect,  with  immense  concentration  and  in- 
tensity; what  he  discovered  was  the  economy  of 
poetry,  the  economy,  that  is,  of  art,  as  a  mode  of  ex- 
pression; and,  in  fact,  when  he  had  written  "Queen 
Mab  "  he  found  —  to  use  the  words  I  have  habitually 
employed  —  that  in  its  few  hundred  lines  he  had  emp- 
tied his  mind;  he  had  done  what  genius  always  does. 
The  poem,  however,  was  a  Reformer's  poem;  it  con- 
tained a  striking  rendering  of  the  image  of  the  starry 
[204] 


SHELLEY 
universe,  an  account  of  the  history  of  man's  progress, 
and  some  delicate  poetical  machinery  in  the  mere  set- 
ting of  the  piece.  Its  true  subject  was  social  reform. 
Five  years  later  he  emptied  his  mind  a  second  time  in 
the  poem  called  "  The  Revolt  of  Islam  " ;  in  the  interval 
he  had  withdrawn  more  from  individual  enterprise  and 
special  causes  in  the  contemporary  world,  and  had  come 
to  realize  the  power  of  literature,  as  greater  than  any  he 
he  could  exercise  otherwise,  in  the  bringing  of  a  better 
world  on  earth;  but  he  still  held  to  political  and  social 
reform,  and  wrote,  under  the  example  and  in  the  stanza 
of  Spenser,  this  allegorical  tale  of  the  Revolution  and  the 
successful  reaction  against  it  then  displayed  in  Europe; 
the  poem  remains  an  inferior  poem,  in  consequence  of  its 
material  and  method;  but  it  contained  all  that  was  in 
Shelley's  mind  at  the  time,  and  was  written  in  the  model 
and  method  of  what  was  then  to  him  the  highest  art. 
Five  years  again  went  by,  and  he  again  emptied  his 
mind  in  the  "  Prometheus  Unbound. " 

In  the  interval  great  changes  had  taken  place  in  him. 
He  was  still  further  removed  from  practical  measures  of 
reform  —  not  that  he  ever  lost  interest  in  them  —  but 
practical  reform  requires  a  machinery  that  he  could  not 
provide;  and  he  now  more  fully  recognized  the  power  of 
ideas,  of  eloquence  to  stir  men's  hearts,  of  poetry  to  em- 
body images  of  the  ideal  with  mastering  force;  and  es- 
[205] 


THE  TORCH 
pecially  he  recognized  the  fact  that  practical  reform  is  a 
thing  that  from  moment  to  moment  results  from  ab- 
stract principles  which  have  an  eternal  being.  More- 
over, he  had  fallen  in  with  Greek,  in  this  interval,  with 
Greek  choral  poetry  on  the  one  hand,  and  with  Greek 
Platonic  philosophy  on  the  other.  His  mind  was  Hellen- 
ized;  like  a  dark  cloud,  his  soul  approached  the  dark 
clouds  of  iEschylus  and  Plato ;  and  the  contact  was  an 
electrical  discharge  of  power :  the  flash  of  that  discharge 
was  the  "  Prometheus  Unbound."  Furthermore,  Shelley's 
poetical  faculty  had  developed  marvellous  brilliancy,  sen- 
sitiveness, colour,  atmosphere,  sublimity  of  form,  suf- 
fusion of  beauty,  and,  all  this,  with  a  lyrical  volume,  in- 
tensity and  penetration  of  tone,  which  his  earlier  verse 
had  not  shown.  He  had  become,  under  the  play  of  life 
upon  him,  a  poet,  so  throbbing  with  the  high  life  of  the 
soul  that  he  seemed  like  an  imprisoned  spirit,  with 
the  voice  of  the  spirit,  calling  to  men  like  deep  unto  deep; 
and  the  world  seemed  to  lie  before  him  transfigured, 
wearing  a  garment  of  outward  beauty  like  a  new  morn- 
ing, and,  in  the  human  breast  clothed  with  freedom, 
nobility,  hope,  such  as  belongs  to  the  forms  of  millennial 
days.  Shelley  had  gathered  into  his  heart  the  power  of 
man  that  I  have  been  speaking  of,  and  stands  forth  as  its 
transcendent  example  in  his  age.  He  had  dropped  from 
him,  like  hour-glass  sand,  the  specific  things  of  earlier 

[206] 


SHELLEY 
days,  things  of  the  free  press,  of  CathoHc  rights,  of  put- 
ting reform  to  the  vote,  of  national  association,  of 
Welsh  embankments  —  all  things  of  detail ;  and  also 
all  lesser  principles  of  property  or  marriage  laws;  he 
had  reached  the  fountains  of  all  these  in  the  single  prin- 
ciple of  the  love  of  man  for  man,  which  alone  he  was 
now  interested  to  preach  and  spread.  He  had  let  go, 
too,  of  all  revolutionary  violence,  as  anything  more  than 
a  secondary  means  of  reform,  and  he  clung  to  the  prin- 
ciple of  patience,  of  forgiveness,  of  non-resistance,  as 
the  appointed  means  of  triumph,  as  I  have  already  il- 
lustrated in  the  treating  of  "  Prometheus".  "  I  have, " 
he  wrote,  in  his  preface,"  a  passion  for  reforming  the 
world":  it  was  his  fundamental  energy  of  life;  but  re- 
form for  him  was  not  now  to  be  discriminated  from  the 
preaching  of  Christ's  Gospel.  The  boy  who  had  begun 
with  a  dime-novel  taste  had  come  into  such  etherialized 
powers  of  imagination  that  the  poem  of  "  Epipsychid- 
ion  "  is,  perhaps,  the  extreme  instance  of  ideal  purity  in 
English;  the  boy  who  had  begun  with  Locke's  sensa- 
tionalism had  come  to  be  the  most  Platonic  man  of  his 
age  in  his  spirituality:  the  boy  who  had  begun  with  an 
indignant  challenge  to  orthodoxy  had  come  to  be  the 
voice  of  Christianity  itself  in  its  highest  forms  of  moral 
command ;  the  boy,  who  began  as  the  practical  reformer 
had  to  come  to  be  the  poet,  smiting  the  source  of  all  re- 
[207] 


THE  TORCH 
from  in  the  spirit  itself,  and  using  all  his  powers  of 
thought,  imagination,  learning,  and  all  the  means  of  art, 
to  set  forth  the  ideals  of  the  spirit  in  their  eternal  forms. 
He  had  passed  through  politics,  philosophy,  religion  — 
through  English  and  French  and  Greek  ideas  — 
through  Italian  and  Spanish  imaginative  art,  and  he  now 
summed  in  himself  that  power  of  man  which  he  had 
lived  through  in  others  —  it  had  become  his,  it  had 
become  himself.  In  the  whole  course  of  this  development 
no  trait  is  more  important  to  observe,  than  his  marvel- 
lous intellectual  honesty;  he  took  only  what  at  any  mo- 
ment was  capable  of  living  in  him ;  he  gave  it  free  course 
in  his  life,  outlived  it,  transmigrated  from  it,  and  came  to 
the  next  stage  of  higher  life,  and  so  won  on  to  the  end. 

The  development  of  Shelley  was  as  rapid  as  it  was 
complete;  he  was  not  yet  thirty  years  old  when  he  had 
become  the  centre  of  human  power  that  he  was,  a  centre 
so  mighty  that  it  would  be  two  generations  before  its 
influence  in  the  world,  and  its  comparative  brilliancy 
among  English  poets,  could  begin  to  be  measured.  His 
genius,  we  now  see,  was  that  of  a  double  personality;  he 
had,  so  to  speak,  two  selves.  First,  and  primary  in  him 
was  his  social  self,  his  public  self,  that  by  which  he  was 
a  part  of  mankind,  was  interested  in  man,  felt  for  man, 
suffered  in  man's  general  wretchedness  in  Europe, 
brooded  over  his  destiny,  formulated  principles  for  his 
[208] 


SHELLEY 
regeneration,  and  lived  in  the  hopes,  the  faith,  the  strug- 
gle of  mankind.  The  greater  works  of  his  mind,  which  he 
elaborated  with  most  conscious  aim  to  serve  the  world, 
were  the  ones  I  have  named,  "Queen  Mab,"  "The  Re- 
volt of  Islam  "  and  "  Prometheus  Unbound, "  with  the 
later,  almost  episodical  choric  drama,  called  "  Hellas," 
whose  subject  was  the  Greek  Revolution  then  going  on : 
all  these  were  the  expression  of  his  social  self.  In  early 
life,  so  absorbed  was  he  in  politics,  morals,  and  phil- 
osophy, that  he  hardly  realized  he  had  any  life  except  in 
these;  but,  as  years  came  on  him  with  their  load,  he  de- 
veloped a  personal  self,  private  and  individual,  the  Shel- 
ley who  was  alone  in  the  world,  on  whom  fell  the  burden 
of  discouragement,  the  penalty  of  error,  the  blows  of 
fortune  and  circumstance, the  wounds  of  the  heart;  and  it 
was  in  this  self  that  his  poetic  power  was  jBrst  put  forth ; 
his  sensitiveness,  his  response  to  nature,  his  lyrical  en- 
thusiasm, his  aspiration,  his  melancholy;  and  he  carried 
over  these  powers  to  the  expression  of  his  social  self,  as 
he  carried  over  all  his  faculties  and  resources  to  that 
cause.  But  the  home  of  his  poetic  genius  was  in  his  per- 
sonal self;  and  the  poems  by  which  he  is  known  as  an 
artist,  as  a  mere  human  spirit  without  reference  to  any 
special  application  of  its  life-work,  are  those  in  which  the 
personal  self  is  directly  and  spontaneously  expressed,  the 
"  Alastor"  being  the  first,  and  after  it  the  "  Adonais  " 
[209] 


THE  TORCH 

and  the  "  Epipsychidion  "  ;  and  in  addition  to  these 
longer  pieces,  the  short  lyrics,  odes  and  stanzas,  and  the 
fragments,  all  of  which  are  effusions,  overflowings  of  his 
own  heart.  If  the  sense  of  his  greatness  is  most  supported 
by  the  larger  creative  works  of  his  imagination,  he  is  most 
endeared  to  men  by  these  little  poems  of  love  and  sor- 
row, of  affection,  of  joy  in  nature,  and  of  human  regret. 
The  most  poignant  of  them  are  those  in  which  the  aspi- 
ration is  itself  a  lament  —  and  in  them  is  the  intimacy  of 
the  poet's  heart.  It  is  impossible  to  close  one's  eyes  to  the 
fact  that  Shelley,  wholly  unappreciated  as  he  was  by  the 
public,  or  in  private  either  for  that  matter,  was  deeply 
dejected  in  his  last  years;  the  personal,  the  artistic  self, 
was  always  a  relatively  increasing  part  of  his  life,  and  he 
occasionally  attempted  great  works,  like  the  "  Cenci  "  or 
"  Charles  II,  "  which  had  no  social  significance.  Had  he 
lived,  it  can  hardly  be  doubted  he  would  have  become 
more  purely  an  artist,  a  creative  poet,  conceiving  the 
cause  of  mankind  more  and  more  largely  as  a  spiritual 
rather  than  an  institutional  cause,  a  cause  of  the  re- 
birth of  the  soul  itself  rather  than  of  the  re-birth  of  na- 
tions. In  his  personal  self  one  principle  reigned  supreme 
—  the  idea  of  love;  love  guided  all  his  actions,  and  was 
the  impulse  of  his  being  —  love  in  all  its  forms,  personal, 
friendly,  humane;  by  that  selective  principle  that  I  spoke 
of  he  saw  life  as  a  form  of  love.  It  is  here  that  the  true 
[210] 


SHELLEY 
contact  occurs  between  his  personal  and  his  social  self, 
for  he  made  love  —  the  love  of  man  for  man  —  the 
principle  of  society  regenerated  as  he  pictured  it  in  the 
"Prometheus."  And  again,  he  made  love,  in  the  "Ad- 
onais  "  the  principle  of  Divine  being  —  that  Power, 

"  Which  wields  the  world  with  never-wearied  love. 
Sustains  it  from  beneath  and  kindles  it  above." 

Wordsworth  found  the  presence  of  God  in 

"  The  light  of  setting  suns. 
And  the  round  ocean  and  the  living  air"  — 

primarily  as  something  external;  Shelley  found  it  pri- 
marily as  something  known  most  intimately  and  clearly 
in  his  own  heart. 

A  poet  of  really  high  rank  is  seldom  a  very  simple 
being;  he  is  made  up  of  many  elements,  some  one  of 
which  usually  has  the  power  of  genius,  and  when  that  is 
at  work  in  him,  he  is  great.  In  Shelley  there  are  at  least 
three  such  elements;  he  was  a  poet  of  nature,  and  es- 
pecially he  had  the  power  to  vivify  nature  almost  as  the 
Greek  did,  to  give  it  new  mythological  being,  as  in  "  The 
Cloud."  He  was  also  a  poet  of  man  —  the  thought  of 
man  was  like  a  flame  in  his  bosom.  And  he  was  a  poet  of 
his  own  heart,  putting  his  own  private  life  into  song.  A 
poet  is  greatest  when  he  can  bring  all  his  powers  to  bear 
[211] 


THE  TORCH 

in  one  act  —  then  he  gives  all  of  himself  at  once.  Shel- 
ley most  nearly  did  this,  I  think,  in  the  "  Ode  to  the  West 
Wind.  "  The  poem  arises  out  of  nature,  in  the  triple  as- 
pect of  earth,  air  and  ocean,  held  in  artistic  unity  by  the 
west  wind  blowing  through  them;  and  it  becomes  at  its 
climax  a  poem  of  the  hopes  of  mankind,  and  of  Shelley 
himself  as  the  centre  of  them,  hke  a  priest.  So  he  invokes 
the  West  Wind  to  which  by  his  act  he  has  given  an  imag- 
inative being  as  if  it  were  the  spirit  of  the  whole  visible 
world  of  air,  earth  and  sea: 

"  Be  thou,  spirit  fierce. 
My  spirit,  —  Be  thou  me,  impetvmis  one! 
Drive  my  dead  thoughts  over  the  universe 
Like  withered  leaves  to  quicken  a  new  birth! 
And,  by  the  incantation  of  this  verse. 
Scatter,  as  from  an  unextinguished  hearth. 
Ashes  and  sparks,  —  my  words  among  mankind." 

"  My  words  among  mankind. "  That  is  not  the  voice  of 
an  ineffectual  angel.  It  is  the  rallying  cry  of  a  great  and 
gallant  soul  on  the  field  of  our  conflict.  When  you  read 
the  "  Ode  to  the  West  Wind,"  see  in  it  the  great  ele- 
ments of  nature  grandly  presented  and  the  cause  of 
mankind  in  its  large  passion,  and  the  spirit  of  Shelley 
like  the  creative  plastic  stress  itself  that 

"  Sweeps  through  the  dull  dense  world,  compelling  there 
All  new  successions  to  the  form  they  wear." 
[212] 


SHELLEY 
Such  are  some  of  the  ways  in  which  Shelley  entered  into 
the  life  of  men  as  Wordsworth  entered  into  the  life  of  na- 
ture, and  leads  the  way  for  those  who  have  hearts  to 
follow.  Dip  in  life,  as  he  did,  with  honesty,  with  enthusi- 
asm, with  faith,  and  whatever  be  the  starting  point  at 
last  you  emerge  on  those  craggy  uplands  of  abstract  and 
austere  beauty  and  reason  and  righteousness  and  Hberty 
and  love  — 

'^ Whereto  our  God  himself  is  sun  and  moon;"  — 

the  fountain-heads  whence  flow  all  the  streams  of  the 
ordered  life  of  the  vale.  I  have  illustrated  this  process  of 
life  by  the  idea  of  the  eye  composing  a  picture;  so  the 
soul  selects  its  most  cherished  desires  and  memories, 
and  comes  to  be  the  soul  of  an  artist,  or  a  soldier,  or  an 
engineer,  as  the  case  may  be.  Let  me  vary  the  illustra- 
tion, and  say  that  our  problem  is,  in  the  presence  of  the 
world  before  us  lying  dull  and  crude  and  meaningless  at 
first,  to  charge  certain  things  in  it  with  our  own  thought 
and  feeling,  and  so  to  give  them  meaning;  thus  our  fa- 
miliar rooms  of  the  house,  and  the  fields  round  about  it, 
for  example,  gain  a  power  and  meaning  which  is  for  us 
only;  the  stranger  does  not  feel  the  welcome  that  the 
trees  of  the  dooryard  give  to  him  who  was  bom  under 
them.  But  we  find,  as  our  minds  go  out  into  life,  things 
already  charged  with  emotion  and  thought,  like  the  flag 
[213] 


THE  TORCH 
or  the  cross ;  and  when  the  flag  is  brought  to  our  lips  and 
the  cross  to  our  breast,  we  feel  the  stored  emotion  of  the 
nation's  life,  the  stored  emotion  of  Christian  sorrow,  in 
the  very  touch  of  the  symbol ;  life  —  the  life  of  the  world 
pours  into  us  with  power.  And  we  find,  again,  ideas  that 
are  similarly  already  clothed  with  might  —  charged  with 
the  hearts  of  whole  nations  that  have  prayed  for  them, 
with  precious  lives  that  have  died  for  them : 

"Names  are  there,  nature's  sacred  watchwords"  — 

liberty,  truth,  justice;  and,  if  we  possess  our  souls  of 
them,  the  power  of  man  flows  into  us  as  if  we  held  elec- 
tric handles  in  our  palms;  beaded  on  the  poet's  verse, 
dropt  from  the  lips  of  some  rapt  orator,  they  thrill  us — 
and  the  instancy,  the  fervour,  the  inspired  power  that 
then  wakes  along  our  nerves  is,  we  feel,  the  most  au- 
thentic sign  that  we  are  immortal  spirits.  And  men 
there  are,  who  seem  like  nuclei  and  central  ganglions  of 
these  ideas,  whose  personality  is  so  charged  with  their 
power  that  we  idolize  and  almost  worship  them  —  what 
we  call  hero-worship.  Such  a  man  Shelley  was,  and  is, 
to  me.  I  remember  as  it  were  yesterday,  when  I  was  a 
freshman  at  Harvard,  the  very  hour  in  that  cold  library 
when  my  hand  first  closed  round  the  precious  volume; 
and  to  this  day  the  fragrant  beauty  of  that  blossomed 
[214] 


SHELLEY 

May  is  as  the  birth  of  a  new  hfe;  and  when  I  read  Words- 
worth's ode,  — 

"  Not  in  entire  forgetfulness 
And  not  in  utter  nakedness. 
But  trailing  clouds  of  glory  do  we  come"  — ■ 

I  think  of  these  first  days  with  Shelley.  To  others  it  is 
some  other  book,  some  other  man  —  Carlyle,  Emer- 
son, Goethe  —  whoever  it  may  be :  for  the  selective 
principle  always  operates  to  bring  a  man  to  his  own ;  but 
in  whatever  way  it  comes  about,  the  seeking  mind  gets 
connected  with  these  men,  books,  ideas,  symbols, 
through  which  it  receives  the  stored  race-force  of  man- 
kind; so  each  of  us,  passing  through  the  forms  of  de- 
veloping life,  receives  the  revelation  of  the  world  and  of 
himself,  grasps  the  world  and  is  able  to  express  himself 
through  it,  to  utter  his  nature,  not  in  language,  but  in 
being,  in  idea  and  emotion,  and  becomes  more  and 
more  completely  man,  working  toward  that  consumma- 
tion, which  I  began  by  placing  before  you,  of  the  time 
when  the  best  that  has  anywhere  been  in  the  world  shall 
be  the  portion  of  every  man  born  into  it. 

I  must  crave  your  patience  for  yet  a  final  thought, 
which,  though  it  may  be  hard  to  realize,  yet,  if  it  be  re- 
alized only  at  moments,  sheds  light  upon  our  days.  Of 
all  the  webs  of  illusion  in  which  our   mortality  is   en- 

[215] 


THE  TORCH 

meshed,  time  is  the  greatest  illusion.  This  race-store, 
our  inheritance,  of  which  I  have  been  speaking,  which 
vitalized  in  our  lives  is  race-power.  Is  not  a  dead  thing,  a 
thing  of  the  past;  all  that  it  has  of  life  with  us  is  living. 
Plato  Is  not  a  thing  of  the  past,  twenty  centuries  ago; 
but  a  mood,  a  spirit,  an  approach  to  supreme  beauty,  by 
the  pathway  of  human  love;  Spenser's  "Red  Cross 
Knight  "  is  not  an  Elizabethan  legend,  but  the  image  of 
the  Christian  life  to-day;  and  the  hopes  of  man  were  not 
burnt  away  in  the  fire  that  consumed  Shelley's  mortal 
remains  by  the  bright  Mediterranean  waves,  nor  do  they 
sleep  with  his  ashes  by  the  Roman  wall;  they  live  in  us.  I 
have  made  much  of  the  idea  that  all  history  is  at  last  ab- 
sorbed in  Imagination,  and  takes  the  form  of  the  ideal  in 
literature;  it  is  a  present  ideal.  We  dip  in  life,  as  Shelley 
did,  and  we  put  on  in  our  own  personality  these  forms  of 
which  I  have  been  speaking  all  along  —  forms  of  liberty, 
forms  of  beauty,  forms  of  reason  —  of  righteousness,  of 
kindliness,  of  love,  of  courtesy,  of  charity,  of  joy  in  na- 
ture, of  approach  to  God  —  and  these  forms  being  pres- 
sent  with  us,  eternity  is  with  us;  they  have  been  shaped 
in  past  ages  by  the  chosen  among  men  —  by  poets,  by 
saints,  by  dreamers  —  by  Plato,  by  Virgil,  and  Dante, 
by  Shakspere  and  Goethe,  who  live  through  them  In  us ; 
except  in  so  far  as  they  so  live  in  us,  they  are  dust  and 
ashes !  Babylon  is  not  more  a  grave.  But  these  ideal 
[216  J 


SHELLEY 
forms  of  thought  and  emotion,  charged  with  the  Hfe  of 
the  human  spirit  through  ages,  are  here  and  now,  a 
part  of  present  hfe,  of  our  hves,  as  our  hves  take  on  these 
forms ;  casting  their  shadows  on  time,  they  raise  us,  as  by 
the  hands  of  angels,  up  the  paths  of  being  —  we  are  re- 
leased from  the  temporal,  we  lay  hold  on  eternity,  and 
entering  on  our  inheritance  as  heirs  of  man's  past  glory, 
we  begin  to  lead  that  life  of  the  free  soul  among  the  things 
of  the  spirit,  which  is  the  climax  of  man's  race-life  and 
the  culmination  of  the  soul's  long  progress  through 
time. 


THE   END 


[217] 


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